Silvio Berlusconi, 80, is set for an astonishing comeback after sweeping election victories for Italy's right-wing, as critics admit the former prime minister is 'politically immortal'
- Italy's right-wing parties won 16 out of 22 cities in Sunday's local elections
- Berlusconi's Forza Italia and the far-right Northern League dominated
- It positions the former Prime Minister as a kingmaker in Italian politics
- Berlusconi was forced out six years ago after a sex scandal
Published: 10:26 EDT, 26 June 2017 | Updated: 20:42 EDT, 26 June 2017
Italy's right celebrated Monday after big victories in local elections, with all eyes on a potential comeback for former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi - just months before the country holds national elections.
The 80-year-old billionaire's Forza Italia (Go Italy) party and the far-right Northern League won 16 of the 22 cities up for grabs Sunday.
Their victory was a shock setback for the governing centre-left Democratic Party.
Berlusconi's Forza Italia and the far-right Northern League dominated the local elections
The loss of the city of Genoa was a particularly big blow. The northern city has traditionally been a bastion of the left, but it passed to the centre-right for the first time.
Former centre-left prime minister Matteo Renzi, dismissed the wins as having little bearing on national voter sentiment.
But the mood on the left was sombre. Editorialist Riccardo Barenghi wrote in the left-leaning Italian newspaper La Stampa that it 'couldn't have gone worse'.
He added: 'Not just for Matteo Renzi, not just for the [Democratic Party]. But for the whole of the Italian left.'
'[It was] as if we'd gone back 23 years to when the left was beaten by the Cavaliere ('The Knight', Berlusconi's nickname), who appeared on the scene like a rabbit from a magician's hat, and today reappears like a castigating ghost.'
The next general election must be held by spring 2018, but the coalition supporting Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni is fragile and many experts say the government could call elections for late in the year.
Left-leaning Italian newspaper La Stampa that it 'couldn't have gone worse' for the left
At the national level, the PD and the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) are running neck-and-neck in the polls, each with about 30 percent of voter intentions, while Forza Italia and the Northern League are each hovering at around 14 percent.
Political commentator Stefano Folli called Sunday's results 'a searing and very painful loss for the left.'
He wrote in the left-leaning La Republica: 'Berlusconi reveals himself to be politically immortal.
Berlusconi, 80, had been largely absent from politics - though not the gossip pages - following his ousting in 2011 and his party had since struggled with internal divisions and corruption scandals.
Lefties always have no sympathy for their own national needs
THE EU POLITICAL CLASS
( This video will be too much for most progressives and political cowards to endure)
How could Italy possibly be upset over how the European Left has led with its chin?
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DeleteBerlusconi was forced out six years ago after a sex scandal
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ReplyDeleteTower of human skulls in Mexico casts new light on Aztecs
Abel Guzman, a biological anthropologist from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), examines a skull discovered at a site where more than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments were found in the cylindrical edifice near Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which later became Mexico City, Mexico June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero
By Roberto Ramirez | MEXICO CITY
A tower of human skulls unearthed beneath the heart of Mexico City has raised new questions about the culture of sacrifice in the Aztec Empire after crania of women and children surfaced among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.
Archaeologists have found more than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments in the cylindrical edifice near the site of the Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which later became Mexico City.
The tower is believed to form part of the Huey Tzompantli, a massive array of skulls that struck fear into the Spanish conquistadores when they captured the city under Hernan Cortes, and mentioned the structure in contemporary accounts.
Historians relate how the severed heads of captured warriors adorned tzompantli, or skull racks, found in a number of Mesoamerican cultures before the Spanish conquest.
But the archaeological dig in the bowels of old Mexico City that began in 2015 suggests that picture was not complete.
"We were expecting just men, obviously young men, as warriors would be, and the thing about the women and children is that you'd think they wouldn't be going to war," said Rodrigo Bolanos, a biological anthropologist investigating the find.
"Something is happening that we have no record of, and this is really new, a first in the Huey Tzompantli," he added.
Raul Barrera, one of the archaeologists working at the site alongside the huge Metropolitan Cathedral built over the Templo Mayor, said the skulls would have been set in the tower after they had stood on public display on the tzompantli.
Roughly six meters in diameter, the tower stood on the corner of the chapel of Huitzilopochtli, Aztec god of the sun, war and human sacrifice. Its base has yet to be unearthed.
There was no doubt that the tower was one of the skull edifices mentioned by Andres de Tapia, a Spanish soldier who accompanied Cortes in the 1521 conquest of Mexico, Barrera said.
In his account of the campaign, de Tapia said he counted tens of thousands of skulls at what became known as the Huey Tzompantli. Barrera said 676 skulls had so far been found, and that the number would rise as excavations went on.
The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples performed ritualistic human sacrifices as offerings to the sun.
(Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-archaeology-skulls-idUSKBN19M3Q6?il=0
In his account of the campaign, de Tapia said he counted tens of thousands of skulls at what became known as the Huey Tzompantli.
One wonders how the count of the dead from Aztec wars and sacrifices stacks up against the toll from the drug use, drug violence and drug wars in Mexico.
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