Prime Minister Romano Prodi's centre left tried to play down its defeat in Sicily's elections on Tuesday, calling them a purely local affair on an Italian island long dominated by the centre right.
Prodi's political rivals, however, said Monday's polls were the beginning of the end for the centre left ahead of more closely-watched May 27-28 administrative elections across Italy. That ballot, expected to draw some 10 million voters, will be the first major electoral test of Prodi's coalition a year after it came to power.
"The Sicilian ballot boxes have sent a message about the end of the mandate for Romano Prodi's government," said centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi, who lost to Prodi by a razor-thin margin in the 2006 general election.
The Mafia was again a big issue in Sicily an island infamous for organised crime. Centre-left anti-Mafia campaigner Leoluca Orlando lost the mayoral vote in capital Palermo to the centre-right incumbent, Diego Cammarata. Orlando alleged voter fraud.
The centre-right scored other big wins in the provinces of Trapani and Ragusa. La Stampa newspaper branded the elections "revenge" for Berlusconi's centre-right. Il Giornale newspaper, owned by Berlusconi's brother, ran a front page cartoon showing Prodi beheaded by a Sicily-shaped alligator.