Italy's polite campaign fuels talk of 'shady' deal

When Italian political rivals start being polite to one another, something is up - especially when one of them is Silvio Berlusconi, who in the last election campaign did not shy from talking of communists eating babies.

With less than a month to go to the vote and the gloves still on, speculation grows that the twice former Prime Minister and his centre-left rival Walter Veltroni may form a "grand coalition" if April's result is too close, despite Mr Veltroni's denials.

Suspicious smaller rivals fear a right-left collaboration that would last just long enough to push through electoral reforms to create a two-party system, freezing them out.

"I fear that around the corner is some shady deal, rather than a grand coalition," said Christian Democrat leader Pier Ferdinando Casini, a centrist who, like the far left, has been spurned by allies who used to rely on him to stay in power.

"After April 13 Berlusconi and Veltroni will divide up power for their own convenience," said Mr Casini, complaining that former ally Berlusconi was now reserving his "venomous" jibes for him.

Mr Berlusconi, a 71-year-old media tycoon who finds outrageous quips irresistible, has promised he "won't attack any rival" in this campaign. Probably the rudest he has been about Mr Veltroni is to accuse him of "scrounging meals" as he tours Italy, accepting invitations to try "Grandma Gina's lasagne" in photo calls.

While dismissing a post-electoral coalition with Mr Berlusconi as "impossible", Mr Veltroni says that if he wins with a "slender majority in the Senate" he will ask the opposition to "create a civil climate" to discuss political reforms before a new vote.

He and Mr Berlusconi had just begun talks when Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition collapsed in January, forcing him to quit as prime minister after 20 months and call an early election.

Mr Berlusconi, sensing an opportunity for a third term as Prime Minister, pulled out of the reform talks and vetoed bids for an interim government to overhaul voting rules.

Introduced by his last government, these rules make it impossible to get a strong majority in the upper house or Senate, as Mr Prodi discovered.

"The same people who didn't want this now say the election is likely to produce a tie and the Senate will be ungovernable," said Mr Veltroni, referring to Mr Berlusconi without naming him.

As Italy stumbles towards yet another vote, after seeing its 61st government since World War II crumble, Mr Berlusconi has made no secret of his concern that although he leads the polls, there is a serious risk of a dead heat in the Senate.

Most polls see Mr Berlusconi's People of Freedom Party beating the Democratic Party by about seven points in the lower house.

Polls on voting intentions for the Senate are rarely carried out because the house is elected on a regional basis, not a national basis like the lower house. So polling has to be done in each of Italy's 20 regions, making it a much more difficult exercise.

"What we are probably going to see is a rather unstable Senate which will again create the kind of difficulty ruling that Prodi's government faced," said politics professor Franco Pavoncello at John Cabot University in Rome.

"If the Senate is unmanageable again I think we might have a couple of years of Grand Coalition," he told Reuters.

His colleague James Walston at the American University in Rome, on the other hand, believes a German-style cross-party alliance is unlikely in Italy, telling Reuters that Mr Berlusconi and Mr Veltroni's "own supporters would skin them alive".

But he does expect narrower coalition building after the vote - "that's one reason why they are being rather polite."

The tone could change if Mr Berlusconi's lead narrows further and there is much scope for movement either way, with a quarter to a third of voters still undecided, according to polls.

Mr Berlusconi, greeted around Italy by the song "Thank goodness for Silvio!" which even a showman like him calls "embarrassing", is targeting such voters and has fielded an unabashed fascist in Lazio region to steal votes from a splinter right-wing group.

While Mr Berlusconi's former centrist allies accuse him of moving to the right, Mr Prodi's old leftist allies, spurned by his dauphin Mr Veltroni, accuse the Democratic Party of abandoning the centre-left by fielding a Venetian industrialist as candidate.