Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi pledged on Tuesday to use his big election win to push through economic reforms, and vowed to close the border to illegal immigrants in a crackdown on criminals he called “the army of evil”.
The 71-year-old conservative secured a third term as prime minister but owed his majority in parliament to the support of the “xenophobic” Northern League, which won 8 percent of votes.
In comments likely to be applauded by the League, he promised tough measures against crime, blamed by many Italians on illegal immigrants, as well as an Italian rescue for Alitalia airline and an end to a garbage crisis in Naples.
“One of the first things to do is to close the frontiers and set up more camps to identify foreign citizens who don’t have jobs and are forced into a life of crime,” Berlusconi said.
“Secondly we need more local police constituting an ‘army of good’ in the piazzas and streets to come between Italian people and the army of evil,” he said in a television interview.
Incomplete results from Sunday and Monday’s vote made the League the third-largest force after Berlusconi’s People of Freedom and the defeated Democratic Party of Walter Veltroni.
The anti-immigrant Northern League’s leader, Umberto Bossi, told La Stampa newspaper the government must overhaul tax laws and crack down on illegal immigration or risk its anger. “Now we need to do reforms, or we will lose our patience,” he said.