Berlusconi Does His Best Schroeder Impression
Judges began checking tens of thousands of contested ballots Thursday, as Italian politics was thrown into turmoil after Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s demand for a recount of rival Romano Prodi’s narrow parliamentary election victory.
Official returns gave Prodi’s center-left coalition the majority in both houses of parliament in the April 9-10 elections but the margin was a mere 25,000 votes in lower Chamber of Deputies. ~ABC News
Schroeder and the SDP’s defeat in the German elections last year was not as close as Berlusconi’s loss in this case, but he did briefly put on a show of not acknowledging his defeat. Berlusconi, always more of a showman, will make the post-election controversy into a surreal circus worthy of a Fellini movie. I will be fairly disappointed if he steps aside gracefully at this point–it would be so out of character!
It does appear that his coalition partners are embarrassed enough by all of this to move away from his claims publicly.
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