Candidate says migrants "put white race at risk" as Italy electoral campaign heats up

ROME, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Too many immigrants are a threat to the white race in Italy, the center-right candidate for governor of Italy's wealthy northern Lombardy region said in an interview that caused an uproar on Monday.

Attilio Fontana, a former mayor from the rightwing, anti-immigrant League party, said that "we need to decide if our ethnicity, our white race, our society, should continue to exist or if they are going to be erased," according to ANSA news agency.

Fontana -- who was named last week as candidate for a center-right coalition made up of Silvio Berlusconi's conservative, pro-EU Forza Italia party and two smaller rightwing, euroskeptic parties -- later retracted, telling reporters his words had been a "slip of the tongue".

Voters in Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and in the region of Lazio, whose capital is Rome, will choose new governors on March 4, when a general election is also being held.

Immigration is a hot-button issue with the Italian electorate, and politicians of every stripe are lobbying for position on this topic as the campaign in the run-up to the vote heats up.

The three main national contenders are the populist Five Star Movement, the center-right coalition led by ex-premier and media mogul Berlusconi, and the center-left Democratic Party.

Fontana's words were promptly slammed by Democratic Party leader and former premier Matteo Renzi, who tweeted that while "the League talks of invasion and white race", his party addresses "innovation and human capital."

"The Lombardy vote on March 4 is a derby between resentment and hope, past and future," Renzi tweeted.

Italy has borne the brunt of the migration crisis, as its southernmost islands are the first landfall for refugees and asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East who entrust themselves to unscrupulous human traffickers to ferry them across the Mediterranean.

The outgoing government of Democratic Party Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has taken steps to curb this traffick across the Mediterranean.

Also on Monday, the Interior Ministry reported that migrant arrivals between Jan. 1-15 this year were down by 64.29 percent compared to the same period last year -- from 2,355 to 841 arrivals. Enditem