Premier Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PdL) party suffered another setback on Wednesday after a Rome appeals court upheld a ruling barring its candidates from running in the Rome province in this month's regional elections.
The court confirmed a decision by a court on Sunday, excluding the PdL from standing in the Rome area because party officials had missed a noon cutoff to present the candidates list on Saturday. The PdL can still take the case to the regional TAR court and then to the state administrative tribunal.
But a final decision would be needed before March 13 - the cutoff for the publication of electoral lists - to allow the PdL to run in the Rome province.
PdL officials have already said they would run the gamut of appeals. Earlier, another Rome court readmitted the party's candidate for the presidency of the Lazio region to run with her own civic list, overruling a decision to strike it off because of a minor bureaucratic glitch.
The pro-Renata Polverini list was initially barred from running in the March 28-29 elections because of a missing signature in documents presented to the electoral panel on Saturday.
Polverini - a trade union leader - is up against Radical party candidate Emma Bonino, a former European Union commissioner who is backed by most of the centre-left opposition, including the PD.
Hours later, however, a Milan appeals court confirmed that the List for Lombardy headed by incumbent president Roberto Formigoni should be barred because of bureaucratic irregularities with some 500 signatures.
Formigoni can still appeal the ruling and even if barred from running with his own list, his re-election is not in doubt since he is backed by the Premier's People of Freedom (PdL) party and the Northern League, which have traditionally strong voter support in the region. Whatever the outcome of further appeals, the flap over the PdL's exclusion from the key Rome province in the March 28-29 elections in 13 of Italy's 20 regions has upset supporters, raised the premier's ire and caused friction within the party.

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