Berlusconi rallies centre-right parties

Silvio Berlusconi called on Italy's centre-right parties yesterday to run under a single banner in April's election, after the main centre-left party threw down the gauntlet and said it will compete alone, without its allies.

Opinion polls suggest billionaire media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi will sweep back to power for the third time after the collapse last month of Romano Prodi's 20 month-old government.

But the 71-year-old leader of Forza Italia and owner of AC Milan soccer club wants to avoid ruling with the kind of broad, bickering coalition that made Mr Prodi's tenure such a misery.

Ironically, Mr Berlusconi now has to deal with an election law biased towards such coalitions that his last government left as a "poison pill" for Mr Prodi just before losing the 2006 election.

Nicknamed the "Cavaliere" (Knight), Mr Berlusconi was the first Prime Minister in 50 years to serve a full term from 2001-2006. But he argued spectacularly with allies and last year dissolved their coalition, dismissing them all as "ectoplasm".

As soon as Mr Prodi's government fell, however, Mr Berlusconi's main allies, the conservative National Alliance (AN) and the far-right Northern League, quickly rallied around him again.

"There will no longer be the symbol of Forza Italia or AN, this is the People of Freedom and there will be a single group in Parliament," Mr Berlusconi said. The separatist League will keep its flag and run "in federation" with the new group, he said.

"People of Freedom" was the name chosen by Berlusconi fans last November to replace the old House of Freedom alliance.

A question mark hangs over the Union of Christian Democrats (UDC), once the third force party in Mr Berlusconi's bloc, who have since withdrawn support and could even swap sides. Mr Berlusconi, speaking to one of three TV channels owned by his Mediaset, said the single list was open to the UDC too, but its leader Pierferdinando Casini has ruled out such an option.

"We are not interested in a single party, which is the result of improvised electoral tactics being imposed on us," Mr Casini said yesterday.

Mr Berlusconi's adversary for the mid-April election is Rome'mayor Walter Veltroni, who is much younger at 52 and presents himself as a "new face" in politics.

Mr Berlusconi's followers point out that Mr Veltroni has actually been in politics far longer than Mr Berlusconi, who burst onto the political scene in the early 1990s.

Mr Veltroni was a communist Rome councillor in the 1970s, member of Parliament in the 1980s and a Deputy Prime Minister in Mr Prodi's 1996-98 government.

He likens himself to US Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, even using his "Yes we can!" slogan this week.