The far-left groups which is now out on its ear included four groups: Rifondazione italiana, the Marxist rump that in 1991 split off from the former Italian Communist Party which was transforming itself into the more moderate PdS (later the DS and now part of Veltroni's Partito Democratico), a smaller even more Marxist party called the PdCI, the Greens and a tiny group called Sinistra Italiana.

        Continuing my full disclosure policy, I shed no tears over this group's demise and hope it will be permanent. To explain this, it might be enough to recount that on the eve of an election held in 2008, in the third millennium, the PdCI's leader, Oliviero Diliberto, said Italy needed "more hammer and sickle". But I would also add that these leftists, and primarily Rifondazione's leader Fausto Bertinotti, were responsible not only for the fall of the first Prodi government, of which it was part, in 1998, but bear most of the blame for the fractiousness of the outgoing Prodi government's nine-party coalition. As for the Greens, well I used to think of Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, their leader, as a dynamic, young left-of-center politician. But as Prodi's Minister of the Environment, his "luddite" position on waste recycling plants was shameful as it certainly helped foment local, and in my opinion uneducated, opposition to such plants in the Naples area where a garbage emergency is in full swing.

        The other surprising result which many observers found disquieting was the excellent showing by the xenophobic-populist-autonomist Northern League (Lega Nord) which polled over eight percent of the vote to win 60 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 25 in the Senate. Many failed to note, however, that this is not a novelty. The League, which in 2001 won less than four percent, had the same 8.4 percent showing in 1992 and 1994. In 1996, the party polled over ten percent of the national vote and had some 120 deputies and senators and guess what, Italy survived, the North has not seceded and I would note, I would add that there are more immigrants in Italy than ever before. I find most of the Lega's national leaders quite objectionable: Leader Umberto Bossi, who has made an astonishing recovery from a very debilitating stroke, is the kind of man who repeatedly says things like, if we don't get what we want, "we will take up arms and fight". But I have to say that in the late '90s when I was covering Italian politics on a fairly regular basis, I came in touch with many of the League's deputies and senators and for the most part they were serious, hard-working individuals.

        So as Berlusconi gets ready to once more pick up the reins of government, he will be dealing with a parliament that has only six parties in it as opposed to 16, and this is surely positive. To sum up: the governing coalition will include Berlusconi's PdL (People's Freedom Party), the Lega and the smaller, Sicilian MPA. The center-left opposition consists of the Partito Democratico (exDS and Ex Margherita) and the IdV, Italia dei Valori, headed by ex magistrate Antonio Di Pietro. One other party has survived the general decimation and that is the UDC, a conservative Catholic party headed by Pierferdinando Casini. Until a few months ago, Casini was a Berlusconi ally but, objecting to many of the latter's positions, and to his personality, his party went out on it's own and polled a respectable 5.9%, giving it 3 senators and 36 deputies.