Third Defeat for the Right Leaves Berlusconi's Future Looking Bleak

Silvio Berlusconi's future as leader of the Italian right looked bleak yesterday after he suffered his third big political defeat in as many months.

In a referendum, voters decisively rejected what many of his supporters regarded as the most important reform passed in the five years he was in office. The bill, approved by parliament before he was defeated at a general election, would have turned Italy into a quasi-federal state and introduced extensive changes to the 1948 constitution. But with the votes from more than 90% of polling stations counted, the noes were projected to outweigh the yeses by 62% to 38%.

Mr Berlusconi's rightwing House of Freedoms alliance had already been defeated at the general election in April and in local and regional elections last month.

The rejected measure, which took up vast amounts of parliamentary time, was the pet project of the Northern League, a key component of Mr Berlusconi's alliance. Before the vote, the league's leader, Umberto Bossi, warned that if the reform was thrown out, he could pull his party out of the House of Freedoms and embark on extra-parliamentary action.

But yesterday's detailed results appeared to narrow Mr Bossi's options. They indicated that a majority of northerners had also voted against his changes.

The league won less than 5% of the vote at the general election, but its influence has always been greater because of evidence that voters for Mr Berlusconi's own party include many who are "on loan" and ready to follow the league's leader if he throws his weight behind the opposition.

Led by the former EU commission president Romano Prodi, the centre-left secured a wafer-thin parliamentary majority in April's general election. The defence minister, Arturo Parisi, said the result strengthened Mr Prodi and his coalition, which was united around a no vote.

Voters turned out in unexpectedly high numbers to see off a proposal that many feared would allow the rich north to become yet richer. The reform would also have enhanced the powers of the prime minister. The turnout was 53%, according to the interior ministry.