ROME: Italians have given Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a severe political beating, leaving him just one year to recover before a general election he now looks in serious danger of losing.

Not even the death of Pope John Paul could keep Italians from delivering the chastening message to Berlusconi at regional elections on Sunday and Monday where his centre-right coalition was defeated in 11 of 13 regions at stake.

Defying fears that Catholics would desert the ballot boxes, the turnout was 71.4 per cent of the more than 41 million eligible voters.

“It is already clear that the defeat, a defeat so crushing that it cannot be talked down or excused, has caused a political crisis for the government,” said Italy’s leading daily, the mainstream Corriere della Sera.

Berlusconi, Italy’s longest-serving prime minister since World War Two, has still not commented on the defeat. His rival, the former European Commission President Romano Prodi, basked however in a result which at a stroke swept away what had been considerable doubts about his ability to unite the left.

“With this vote Italians are asking us to prepare to govern, to take the country forward,” he said.

While Prodi’s “Union” showed it could hold together a broad swathe of opinion from centrists to staunch communists, one of whom was voted president of the politically important southern region of Puglia, Berlusconi’s coalition risks implosion.

“Berlusconi will blame his coalition partners and they will blame him,” said Politics Professor Franco Pavoncello of Rome’s John Cabot University. “But if they go down that road it’s going to be very difficult for them at the next election.”

“There’s a perception that this coalition is really a group of parties with very different ideas, held together by the need to keep power,” Pavoncello said.

One of the government’s most divisive policies — the devolution of political power, pits the populist Northern League, which wants more independence for the rich north, against the right-wing National Alliance whose support is drawn more from the poorer south.

That issue is not going to go away and Prodi has said he intends to make opposition to the constitutional reforms a key part of his strategy to win the 2006 general election.

Even more damaging to Berlusconi than the centre-right’s lack of unity is the electorate’s apparent rejection of his record over the past four years, political analysts said.

“Berlusconi made promises in very triumphant tones, and they were not kept,” said Sergio Romano, a political commentator and former ambassador.

His “contract with the Italians”, an election manifesto he signed with a flourish on a TV chat show ahead of the 2001 election promised a brighter, more prosperous Italy.

But reforms in areas such as the legal system, the labour market and the tax system — which were often hampered by opposition from unions and weak economic growth — are seen by voters as ineffective, Pavoncello said.

“The perception is that the impact wasn’t that strong. He hasn’t made much of a change.”

Two rounds of income tax cuts have failed to sway Italians who feel inflation and indirect tax hikes have eroded their buying power.—Reuters