Defying Crisis, Berlusconi Wins Regional Vote

Instead, L`Unita` ran a front page headline: `Sardinia Lost`, above a photo of Berlusconi`s island mansion.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's party won an election on the island of Sardinia, results showed on Tuesday, consolidating the conservative leader's strength despite a deepening recession.

Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul with a luxury villa on the Mediterranean island, had criss-crossed Sardinia during a hard-fought campaign to capture a region previously controlled by centre-left rivals.

The race for governor was the latest electoral defeat for the opposition Democratic Party (PD), which also has been hurt by several corruption scandals.

Even the global downturn, which is putting Italy on course for its longest recession since World War Two, has not helped the Italian opposition loosen Berlusconi's grip on power.

"The economic crisis has started to bite the country. The paradox is that the responsibility isn't put on the government, but on its rivals," wrote columnist Massimo Franco, in a piece analysing Berlusconi's victory for Corriere della Sera daily.

The centre right's candidate for Sardinia governor, Ugo Cappellacci, the son of Berlusconi's tax adviser, had 52 percent of the vote early on Tuesday and was declared victor.

That compared with 43 percent for rival Renato Soru, the former Sardinia governor and founder of telecoms firm Tiscali. Soru, also the owner of left-leaning newspaper L'Unita', had been tipped as a future leader for the centre-left opposition.

Instead, L'Unita' ran a front page headline: "Sardinia Lost", above a photo of Berlusconi's island mansion.

Newspaper Il Giornale, which is owned by Berlusconi's family, called the vote a "Coup de Grace" on the centre left.

Analysts said they agreed that the PD appeared to be in a downward spiral and needed a change in leadership from the course set by Walter Veltroni, the former Rome mayor who lost to Berlusconi in a parliamentary election last April.

"Truly, one can't see where the PD can begin to stem a haemorrhaging of consensus and credibility that looks unstoppable," wrote Federico Geremicca on the front page of La Stampa newspaper.

Italy's economy, the third largest in the euro zone, posted a quarter-on-quarter contraction of 1.8 percent in the last three months of 2008. That outpaced a record euro zone contraction of 1.5 percent.

The economic slump is expected to produce a marked deterioration in public finances in Italy, which has the world's third largest debt load. Its debt is forecast to top 110 percent of GDP this year.