Italians on Tuesday got their first taste of life under their new government as Silvio Berlusconi moved to appease the newly powerful Northern League with pledges of lower taxes, more police and camps for jobless foreigners. ”One of the things to do is to close the frontiers,” he said in a TV interview.
Silvio Berlusconi has won his third Italian election with a bigger-than-expected swing to the centre right, but the media magnate said it would not be easy to solve deep economic problems. Votes were still being counted on Tuesday, but with Berlusconi’s victory clear on Monday evening, centre-left leader Walter Veltroni called to concede defeat.
Self-made billionaire Silvio Berslusconi looked set to secure a third term as Italian prime minister on Monday, with exit polls predicting a narrow win for his conservative coalition in general elections. The exit polls, which came moments after voting ended, predicted the 71-year-old media magnate’s centre-right coalition would win.
Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday appealed to Italian voters to give him a huge majority at the general election on Sunday and Monday. He said that ”to really govern” he needed a margin of at least 20 seats in the Senate, the Upper House of the Italian Parliament. That would allow him ”to take, if necessary, difficult and unpopular decisions”.