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Italian elections result

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Italian Election Results

A hard-won victory by just a few votes, but victory nevertheless. Million of Italians, and many other Europeans with us, had waited till dawn to have the first results, but we'd really been waiting for months, years. The exit polls before and just after the vote got it completely wrong, giving the centre-left a wide margin of victory. In the event, over 80% of voters cast their ballots, an extraordinary achievement for any European country, though nearly 50% - though fortunately not quite 50% - had once again chosen the centre-right.

Berlusconi has changed Italian politics, with his alliances in the worlds of economy, finance and communication. With his television stations and newspapers he had destroyed culture and education, promoting football while crippling the school system; and governing the country with easy promises, but never fulfilled like a door-to-door sales man. He replaced foreign policy with a policy of personal friendships (Putin being a guest at his villa in Sardinia, and the many walks at Bush's ranch...).

Italy needs to change course quickly. Growth is stalled at zero per cent. Our companies have lost competitiveness. Jobs are increasingly precarious. Poverty is rising both in the North and the South. And illegality is ever more pervasive. This is the picture of a country which had lost its dignity and its credibility at the international level. To vest hopes in a new government has become a necessity. Now it is the time for collective responsibility, and the terms 'partnership' and 'dialogue' are those most used by trade unions when the electoral results are discussed.

Most worrying is the state of public finances, hence the immediate need to contain the public debt - though to date we still don't know the real figures. The trade unions are insisting that the views of the social partners are taken fully into account and that dialogue is resumed on issues such as the fight against precarious work, the introduction of fiscal policies that are fairer to workers and pensioners, and the fight against tax evasion and the black economy. We need to re-think investment policy to re-launch the universities and research bodies to build centres of excellence that have never existed in Italy.

The priorities now must be to re-gain the trust and to meet the hopes of workers and citizens, and to re-build a European and international dimension that has been lost over the last few years. The European Union needs an Italy which is institutionally reliable, economically growing, and financially trustworthy. The CGIL, together with other social and economic actors, is committed to work on these themes during the next years of a centre-left government.

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