Ignored Italian party leader stages hunger strike
Italy’s former European Commissioner Emma Bonino is on hunger strike in protest at what she says is unfair media coverage of the countgry’s impending general election.
Bonino, 53, began refusing food and drink on Saturday and today ignored doctors’ orders and rejected any medicine.
A leader of the small Radical Party who is running in the May 13 election, she is protesting at the election coverage as well as the lack of public access to scientific findings.
Italian President Carlo Aziglio Ciampi, speaking at a May Day event , said Bonino’s message had been heard and that more coverage should be allotted to the Radicals’ concerns.
Much of the state television coverage of the campaign has focused on conservative media magnate Silvio Berlusconi and his centre-left challenger for premier, former Rome Mayor Francesco Rutelli.
