VERONA – The centre-right were defeated as the centre left secured a surprise victory in seven provincial capitals in a set of local election run-offs, results showed on Monday. 

 Sunday’s local elections saw the last test of the nation’s voting patterns ahead of parliamentary elections next year. Citizens voted in the ballot for 65 cities, though, as the news agency Corrierra della sera reported, only 42 percent of the over 2 million who had the right to vote cast their ballot, seeing a turnout that was down by 13 percent from the first round.

 Damiano Tommasi, former Italian international midfielder, has been elected mayor of Verona after heading a centre-left coalition and snatching the victory from the centre right in the local election run-offs.   Verona, historically a centre-right stronghold, saw Tommasi beat incumbent Federico Sboarina, with 53.3 percent of the vote compared to 46.7 percent, after 15 years of centre-right rule. Tommasi ran as an independent candidate against Sboarina who represented the Brothers of Italy party. 

 Paying the price for not forming a united front and rallying behind the same candidate against Tommasi, the centre-right bloc only won four of the provincial capitals, Frosinone, Lucca, Gorizia, and Barletta, while two went to independent civic lists – Como and Viterbo.

 Tosi had won 23.86 percent of the vote in the first round of runoffs, a percentage sufficient for centre-right victory, but Sboarina did not run with him, despite being encouraged to do so by Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy, as he feared becoming hostage to his rival who is well versed in Veronese administration and had proposed an official affiliation. 

 Michele Guerra, centre-left candidate, is now the new mayor of Parma, beating former centre-right mayor, Pietro Vignali, with a 66.19 percent to 33.81 percent.

 The centre-right were also defeated in Piacenza and the centre-left won in Monza, Catazaro, and Alessandria, as a “new leaf has been turned.”

 "This result strengthens us in view of the future, in building a centre-left bloc that will be a winner also on a national level, at next year's political elections,” said the leader of the Democratic Party, Enrico Letta.

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