A former Industry Minister has been elected leader of Italy's center-left opposition, results showed Monday, in a vote clouded by a scandal involving a prominent leftist politician.
Pier Luigi Bersani captured 53 percent of the 3 million votes cast Sunday, state radio reported, and his two challengers conceded victory. Bersani must now try to reinvigorate a divided and weak opposition, which has been in disarray since Premier Silvio Berlusconi's political forces won 2008 elections.
But the opposition Democratic Party has been blindsided by a new scandal over an alleged encounter between one of its founding members, Piero Marrazzo, and a transsexual prostitute in a Rome apartment in July. Media reports say there is video evidence, and four policemen have been arrested for allegedly attempting to blackmail Marrazzo.
The 51-year-old Marrazzo, who is married with three daughters, stepped aside as governor of the Lazio region, which includes the Italian capital Rome, hours before Sunday's primary vote and suspended his membership in the party.
He has said he was living a "nightmare" and that he hadn't gone to the police out of fear and shame. He said he wrote three checks to the alleged blackmailers, although they weren't cashed.
On Monday, Italian newspapers reported that Marrazzo knew of the video three days before the policemen were arrested because Berlusconi himself phoned to advise him that his Mondadori publishing company had been approached by a photo agency offering the video of the alleged encounter for ⁈0 ($300,000).
Berlusconi assured Marrazzo that Mondadori, which publishes the Italian gossip magazine Chi among other publications, had declined the offer, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica reported.
Berlusconi has been in headlines for months over revelations about his purported relations with young women, including a high-end prostitute. He has denounced the media for driving what he has called a smear campaign against him.
The premier's allies, who have had to defend Berlusconi in the face of accusations of improper behavior, were quick to capitalize on the Marrazzo incident, saying that the opposition could no longer claim the moral high ground.
