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Berlusconi fights hard to retain power

Vaiju Naravane

Opinion polls show Prime Minister's alliance trailing

Rome: With just 48 hours to go before 50 million Italian voters go to the polls on Sunday, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was fighting hard to retain his hold on power. The last opinion polls showed his conservative alliance was trailing five points behind the Centre-Left grouping led by former Italian Prime Minister and E.U. Commission president Romano Prodi.

The two men are to hold their final election rallies on Friday, Mr. Prodi in Rome and Mr. Berlusconi in the southern port city of Naples. Political analysts say that 25 per cent of the 50-million-strong electorate remains undecided.

An increasingly emotional Mr. Berlusconi has lost control of himself several times, using foul language and accusing Mr. Prodi's Left wing alliance of "harbouring Communists". Using Bush-style rhetoric, the Prime Minister said Mr. Prodi posed a threat "to the freedom" of Italians.

In his latest outburst on Thursday, a furious Prime Minister launched an extraordinary attack on prosecutors saying they were plotting against him in a bid to influence voters. At a special news conference, Mr. Berlusconi lambasted magistrates in Milan who have tried to indict him for bribing a witness in exchange for favourable evidence in 1997. The case also involves British lawyer David Mills, the estranged husband of Tessa Jowell, a Minister in Tony Blair's Government.

Mr. Berlusconi said the legal moves, which date from February, showed the judiciary was being used against him for political purposes. "I am deeply outraged," he said.

Prodi hits back

But an unflappable Mr. Prodi said: "This campaign began with Berlusconi's insults against the magistrates and is finishing with his insults against the magistrates".

Mr. Prodi's ally, Massimo d'Alema who heads the PDS or Left Democratic Party, said: "Berlusconi is a man fighting against the whole country. I don't know how he can govern Italy in this way, and in fact I think he won't be governing it any more".

Italy is in a deep economic crisis with a huge national debt, an annual growth rate of 1.5 per cent and rising unemployment. Mr. Berlusconi's coalition partners, particularly the racist and xenophobic Northern League have tended to blame immigrants for the country's woes.

Mr. Berlusconi's Centre-Right coalition has turned every trick in the book to cling on to power, using its comfortable parliamentary majority to change the electoral law, restoring proportional representation, which critics say will increase the risk of political fragmentation.

The new voting system is also likely to make it very difficult for the Left, which depends on the support of small parties, to govern alone if they win the election.

The war in Iraq, though deeply unpopular in Italy, has not been a major campaign issue as Italians worry more about the direction of the economy. Gianfranco Fini, head of the Right-wing National Alliance in Mr. Berlusconi's coalition and his Foreign Minister, led the party's final campaign rally in Rome on Thursday evening, warning: "The Centre-Left means taxes."

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