The votes from Italians overseas are in, and the Senators they chose split 5-1 for the center-left, giving Prodi control of the Senate as well as the lower chamber. Berlusconi is calling for a recount, but with a 25,000-vote margin and only 43,000 disputed ballots, it looks as if he’s out of luck and out of office.
About time, too.
What is especially wonderful is how the strange new representation of Italians abroad introduced by the center right completed the defeat of Berlusconi.
The post-neo-fascist Allianza Nazionale has been agitating for votes for Italians abroad for years (decades maybe but no one paid attention to them before Berlusconi allied with them). They seem to have assumed that emigrants (and children of emigrants) who want to vote in Italian elections will be loony nationalists.
My personal reading of the 5-1 result (which surprised analysts who expected a 3-3 split) is that anyone who gets news from any source other than Berluscavision TV knows that he is a crook and a buffoon.