Rome - Rome's mayoral race is to be decided in a run-off, first-round voting results Wednesday showed as a swing to the right was registered in polls held in two of the country's regions in line with Silvio Berlusconi's victory in Italy's general elections. With most votes counted on Wednesday in Rome, neither the centre- left's candidate as mayor, Francesco Rutelli, nor his centre-right rival, Gianni Alemanno, managed to muster the required 50 per cent needed for a first-round win.
The two will compete in what is likely to be a tight run-off vote, scheduled for April 27-28.
On Sunday and Monday voters in Rome, cast ballots in the municipal election and, along with the rest of the country, in the national poll.
Similarly, voters in two of Italy's 20 regions, Sicily and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, participated in a regional poll as well as in the national one.
Francesco Rutelli, culture minister in outgoing Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government, and Rome's mayor from 1993 to 2001 captured around 47 per cent of the capital's mayoral votes, compared with his rival's 41 per cent.
Gianni Alemanno, an agriculture minister in Berlusconi's last government in 2006, is expected to receive support from the hard- right La Destra and the centrist Union of Christian Democrats in the run-off. The two parties each won just over 3 per cent votes in the first round.
Rome's mayoral seat became vacant when Walter Veltroni resigned last month to contest the national election as the centre-left Democratic Party' candidate for prime minister.
Veltroni had won a second term as Rome mayor in 2006 with a crushing 61 per cent of votes against Alemanno's 37 in the first round.
Also on Wednesday results showed that the north-eastern Friuli- Venezia Giulia region's president, coffee industrialist Riccardo Illy had been ousted from office by the centre-right's candidate, Renzo Tondo who won 54 per cent of votes cast compared with his rival's 46.
The centre-right comfortably retained its leadership in Sicily, despite the resignation in January of outgoing president, Toto Cuffaro, following his five-year jail sentence in a Mafia-related case.
The centre-right's candidate for the island's presidency, Rafaelle Lombardo, won some 65 per cent of votes compared with the 30 per cent won by the centre-left's Anna Finocchiaro.
