Press Interpreter

The Left will guide the Province of Olbia-Tempio and the towns of Iglesias, Porto Torres and Sestu.

05/23/05 -- Cagliari -- The results of the second round of administrative elections in Sardina present another confirmation of the “project� of Renatu Soru and another fall of historic strongholds of the ruling center-right coalition. The results of the ballots for the administrative elections in Sardinia confirmed the defeat on all fronts of the center-right coalition, especially because the newly-formed province of Olbia-Tempio did not follow the orientation of its main city, Olbia, which is known as “little Arcore� (Arcore is the hometown of prime minister Berlusconi, outside Milan) for the faithful following that Berlusconi has there, in the central town of the Costa Smeralda resort area.

The overall result is a clear four-nil for the center-left, which apart from the newborn province of Olbia-Tempio snatched from the center-right the townships of Iglesias, Sestu and Porto Torres.

The most extraordinary result is that of Gallura, the northern part of the island where Olbia lies, where the success of Pietrina Murrighile over her opponent of the House of Liberties, Livio Fideli, brings to seven, out of a total eight, the number of provinces in which the center-left coalition was victorious.

The incoming president of the province, a prominent exponent of Project Sardinia, the party-movement founded by governor Soru, was supported by five lists (center-left parties plus Psd’Az) won with a margin of four points over her adversary: 52 against the 48% of Fideli. A difference of 2,831 votes, which she made up in fifteen days: the initial response at the urns had revealed an advantage of only about 300 votes for Murrighile.

The ballot granted a very close victory to the incoming mayor of Sestu, a large urban center in the Cagliari area, where only a handful of votes, 28 to be exact, had separated the two candidates after the first electoral round: Aldo Pili, supported by five lists of the center-left, prevailed (with 50.9%) over the deputy of the Reformers Michele Cossa (49.1%), already mayor of the city.

Unambiguous instead was the affirmation of the center-left coalition in Porto Torres, a township in the Sassari area which had been administered by a commissary after the shipwreck of the preceding center-right coalition. With 52.7% the new major is Luciano Mura, who beat in the ballot the centrist candidate Tonino Tanda (47.3%) whom he had already distanced at the first round by eleven points

In Iglesias the curtain descended upon the hegemony of the center-right Christian Democratic Union: despite the linkage with the former socialist major Paolo Fogu’s list, the center-right candidate Giulio Steri, who had been chosen by the Christian democrats, took a beating from his challenger Pierluigi Carta, who becomes major with 55.6% of the consensus against the 44.4% of his adversary.

[Full article]

By La Repubblica Staff

--Translated by Alexander Bevilacqua

Go to original article:

http://www.repubblica.it/2005/e/sezioni/politica/eledomani/ballosard/ballosard.html