There was a riot in Piazza del Popolo yesterday when Prime Minister Berlusconi narrowly won the confidence vote, 314 – 311. He would be forced to resign if he had lost.
A group of about 50,000 people, mostly comprising of students and foreign workers, who expected the premier to lose, were fed up and started to throw eggs to the police in riot gear, setting cars on fire and mayhem ensued. Inside the parliament house was just as chaotic as claims from the opposition party that votes were bought and when a member decides to give her vote to Berlusconi.
Cart mentioned that there hasn’t been such violence since the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001.
This is scary stuff. Don’t worry everyone, we are fine since we are not living near central Rome. But its creepy to think that we were here just a few days ago and I pity the tourists, the shopkeepers and generally everyone who were caught there.
Wow. That looks wild! In a weird way, I wish I’d been there to see it firsthand. It would have been interesting.
But probably not upfront yeah, that’s a tad too dangerous!
Oh my…. It looks scary! I was visiting that place juz 2 weeks ago. Hope everything will calm down n poor tourists who were caught in this riot!
Indeed, they were probably clueless at what was going on! You were in Rome two weeks ago? How was it by the way?
It is quite scary, the student(on Thursday last week) protest started on Victoria Street, which I had to cross over to get to the girls’ school, and it wasn’t nice. There was another outside Scotland Yard which is round the corner on Monday against Police violence. Hannah was saying in front of the police, if they are protecting themselves who is going to protect her, they stared at us, I found it funny…
Do keep yourselves safe, gosh, I cant imagine how it would be like being stuck right in the area like that. Burnt cars, broken shops, stuff thrown at each other …