Hugh Edwards reports from Italy

For the third time in 15 years Silvio Berlusconi has won a more than convincing victory in the Italian elections of last weekend. His rightwing People of Liberty party, along with the his ally Umberto Bossi"s populist and racist Lega Nordacross (supported in wide areas of the north), has been guaranteed comfortable majorities in both houses of the Italian parliament. Their success left the Democratic Party of Valter Veltroni, heralded as the "revolutionary mould-breaker" of old-style "coalition-obsessed" Italian politics, trailing nearly 10 points behind in both houses.
Contrary to expectations that there would be massive abstentions, given widespread demoralisation and cynicism following the lamentable failure of the Prodi government and especially the Radical Left coalition within it, the turnout of the vote was around 81% —a fall of 3% from the last election in 2006. Not large but by no means insignificant. All the more so when it emerges that a good part of it made up the absolute disaster that befell the Rainbow Coalition (the Radical Left) led by Fausto Bertinnotti’s Communist Refoundation party. The coalition lost nearly three million votes, failing abysmally to reach the quotas of 4% and 8% for the "Camera" and the "senate" respectively. The presence of the "communist" and "radical" left in the parliament has, therefore, been completely wiped out, losing 110 seats. It is a veritable earthquake destined to have an extraordinary impact on left politics in Italy and within a very short time. One cannot imagine a more deadly and fitting comeuppance to those, like the superannuated career-fop Bertinnotti, for whom the Parliamentary road to socialism had become an article of faith.
Bertinnotti has since resigned from the leadership of the party, and the same fate seems certain for the others. Already an emergency national conference has been called for along with demands for the resignation of the national directorate of Refoundation.

Of the two "Trotskyist" currents in the election, the Communist Party of Workers, operating with minimal material and human resources but arguing with impressive force and anger against Italian and international capitalism, took a very creditable 160,000 votes for the Camera and 140,000 for the Senate. At the very least it indicated that there does exist an audience for the revolutionary ideas and practice which, in the face of what a Berlusconi government is preparing for the Italian working masses, will without a shadow of doubt become ever more precious and widespread in the months ahead.