(Rome) Italy has tilted to right with Silvio Berlusconi triumphing in parliamentary election.

Bolstered by right-wing allies - an anti-immigrant party and a former neo-fascist grouping - the 71-year-old media magnate emerged from the election with a generous majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

Berlusconi’s forces will need a solid command of Parliament if they are to make headway in solving long-simmering economic and social problems, including ones that plagued his 2001-2006 government, Italy’s longest since the end of World War II.

Berlusconi also has indicated he plans to tap Franco Frattini, a former European Union justice commissioner, as foreign minister and bring back Giulio Tremonti as finance minister.

The election is expected to result in a hard line with Italy’s LGBT community.

The gay-friendly government of Romano Prodi was defeated in January and Prodi was replaced as leader of the left-of-center coalition by Walter Veltroni.

Prodi was sunk when the Senate voted 161-156 to defeat his coalition. The crisis began when the small but key Christian Democrat party which is aligned with the Vatican pulled out of the coalition - in large part due to Prodi’s support for same-sex civil partnerships.

The Senate vote ended a fiery session which was rife with homophobic epithets from conservatives. One senator was spat on, fainted and was carried out on a stretcher. 

Last fall a proposed bill to grant civil partnerships for gay couples was shelved in a last ditch effort to keep the support of the Christian Democrats but the small party split anyway when some coalition members said they would introduce the partnership measure anyway.

With the defeat of the government the bill died, but Veltroni had indicated if he were elected he would bring back the bill.

The civil partnership legislation would have allowed same-sex couples to sign a civil registry and then share pensions, health insurance, enter into contracts, and permit them to be considered the same as married couples for public housing.

Berlusconi, who lost to Prodi in 2006, is a frequent guest at the Vatican and is a staunch opponent of LGBT rights.

In 2004, during his last stint as Prime Minister Berlusconi’s handpicked man to be the European Union’s human rights chief was rejected by an EU committee after Rocco Buttiglione called homosexuality “a sin” and that marriage existed “to allow women to have children and to have the protection of a male.'’

Reacting to the EU move, Berlusconi cabinet minister launched into a homophobic tirade. “Poor Europe: the faggots are in the majority,” Mirko Tremaglia declared.