The implications of the Italian elections
Freelance Journalist, Megan Williams
We started this segment with a montage of some patrons at a cafe in Rome's Parco della Musica. Those voters weren't too enthused about their choices at the ballot box. But Italy's elections -- voting began yesterday and ends today -- come at a crucial time for the country.
After 18 months under the leadership of Prime Minister Mario Monti -- an economist and European Union technocrat who came to office with a mandate to drag the Italian economy into something approaching respectability -- Italians appear to have had enough.
Most polls have the man once known as "Super-Mario" running a distant third ... behind centre-left candidate Pier Luigi Bersani and Silvio Berlusconi, the former Prime Minister who has been convicted on a charge of corruption and waiting for a verdict on a case involving paying for sex with an under aged girl.
Anti-austerity sentiment is on the rise across Europe. The difference with this vote is that Italy is the Eurozone's third largest economy ... so what happens there puts the whole European Union on notice.
Megan Williams is a freelance journalist based in Rome.
Editor of Quattrogatti.info, Piero Tortola
Even with legal challenges and severe public gaffes, Silvio Berlusconi does have a very clear advantage over his two rivals. He owns most of Italy's private TV stations.
Piero Tortola says that makes it difficult for Italian voters to get unbiased information about the election and its issues. He and a number of other up and coming Italian academics have set up a website to try to counter that imbalance.
Piero Tortola is an editor with the site, Quattrogatti.info. He was in Vasto, Abruzzo.
Author of Good Italy / Bad Italy, Bill Emmott
Girlfriend in a Coma is the name of a documentary by Bill Emmott and Annalisa Piras. It's making the rounds in Europe right now and it was inspired by Bill Emmott's book called Good Italy / Bad Italy: Why Italy Must Conquer Its Demons to Face the Future. He is journalist and he joined us from Devon, England.
This segment was produced by The Current's Liz Hoath, Lara O'Brien and Vanessa Greco.
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