A surprise casualty of Italy's general election was the country's bewildering maze of multi-party politics which had made it an anomaly among Western nations.
Despite a 2005 return to proportional representation and a convoluted electoral law, the ballot box unexpectedly eliminated all but one of Italy's myriad tiny parties, ejecting Communists, neofascists, Greens and Socialists from parliament as well as various minuscule Christian Democrat formations.
Italian dailies used apocalyptic tones to describe the shake-up, saying parliament had been hit by an ''earthquake'' and a ''tsunami'' which would leave it with no more than six parties compared to the previous 26.
Tired of the instability created by smaller parties wielding blackmailing powers disproportionate to their size, voters opted for the major parties, pushing Italy towards a two-party system for the first time in the history of the Republic.
The development could end the system of revolving-door administrations in a country which has been through 61 governments since the end of the war.
The fate of outgoing Premier Romano Prodi was emblematic when his centre-left nine-party government was toppled by the defection of a Christian Democrat ally whose party had scored less than 1.5% in the 2006 election.
The biggest party in the new parliament will be election winner Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom party (PDL), which gained 37.4%, followed by defeated candidate Walter Veltroni's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) on 33.2%.
The Northern League, a populist, devolutionist party allied with Berlusconi, will be the third largest force after seeing its support jump to 8.3% from 4.6% in 2006.
Next in line is the unaligned centrist, Catholic UDC, a former Berlusconi ally which won 5.6% on a national level but only managed to muster two seats in the Senate where voting is regionally based and parties standing alone must exceed 8% in order to gain representation - a feat the UDC only managed in one region.
Veltroni ally Italy of Values (IDV) led by former anti-graft prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro will be the fifth biggest group after winning 4.4%.
The only remnant of the past was the teeny Sicilian-based party, Movement for Autonomy (MpA) which gained 1.1% but was saved by its alliance with Berlusconi and a catch in the complicated electoral law allowing the 'readmittance' of the most-voted party in a coalition which falls below the 2% threshold needed for representation.
LEFT OUT OF THE PICTURE.
Instead, the once-mighty Socialist party, a constant presence in parliament since its creation in 1892, will vanish from the scene together with the Communists, whose hammer and sickle logo has been a parliamentary feature since 1921.
The disappearance of the Communists, allied with the Greens in a federation called the Left-Rainbow (SA), was one of the most surprising outcomes of the vote.
SA leader and former House Speaker Fausto Bertinotti, a 68-year-old leftist veteran who was standing for premier in the Sunday-Monday vote, was devastated when the SA failed to gain more than 3.1% and promptly quit.
The historic leader of the Communist Refoundation Party, Bertinotti had teamed up with other hard-left groups and the Greens expecting to at least match the 10% the parties had chalked up in the previous election.
His own party had garnered 5.8% in 2006 with regional peaks of 10% and more to make it the third-biggest party in Prodi's winning coalition.
''This is a total disaster - a drubbing of such unexpected proportions and a heavy personal defeat,'' Bertinotti said on Monday evening in announcing his resignation after a life-long career of activism.
Hard-right groups were similarly penalised, including the recently-formed The Right which had been pinning its hopes on glamorous premiership hopeful and self-professed Fascist Daniela Santanche'.
The Right overestimated its chances of stealing votes from a much larger rival, the National Alliance (AN), hoping to profit from the risk AN created of alienating its voters by merging with Berlusconi's PDL party two months ago.
Instead, Santanche' won just 2.4%, losing her seat in parliament in the process.
The Church was seen as another loser by some political observers after the UDC, which embraces traditional, Catholic values and is close to the Vatican, saw its voter support fall from 6.8% to 5.6% and other smaller heirs of the Christian Democrat tradition were eliminated from the picture.
Another party campaigning on a one-issue, pro-life ticket, led by prominent conservative newspaper editor Giuliano Ferrara, mustered no more than 0.4%.
Ferrara, who started up his Abortion? No Thanks movement just two months ago winning the immediate backing of top Church officials, said on Tuesday: ''What a catastrophe... To my cry of pain on such a real and dramatic issue, Italians replied with a resounding raspberry''.
