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Final day of voting in Italy's elections
ROME
Petroleumworld.com, April 14, 2008With turnout hit by public apathy, Italians on Monday wrapped up the country's two day election that could see billionaire conservative Silvio Berlusconi become prime minister for a third time.
A dramatic fall in voter numbers on the first day drew new criticism of the political system as Berlusconi, 71, and former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni, 52, waited to see which would get the chance to lead Italy's 63rd government in 63 years and tackle the stumbling economy.
Turnout was down four percentage points as of the end of Sunday's polling, compared to the election two years ago, at 62.5 percent. There was frenzied analysis in Italian newspapers.
"A sign of the new climate," wrote the Corriere della Sera daily. "Politics is losing points."
The paper's polling expert Renato Mannheimer commented: "A large section of those who said they were undecided until the last moment must have wound up staying away."
The general malaise was reflected in the polls ahead of the election which indicated one third of voters were undecided.
Beppe Grillo, a comedian and government critic, wrote on his popular blog: "A non-vote is the only useful vote."
Berlusconi or Veltroni will both have to ease Italians' fears over the economy. A survey two weeks ago indicated 51.4 percent of Italians, up from 36 percent a year ago, feel worse off.
Veltroni urged voters to "turn the page" on the older generation represented by Berlusconi, who for his part cast his rival as a communist relic.
Rome's mayor for the past seven years is a veteran player in Italian politics, having entered as a communist youth activist in the 1970s.
Berlusconi, notorious for gaffes and derided for efforts to hide his age and receding hairline, has been implicated in a string of corruption probes and ran up a budget deficit equal to 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) during his last premiership.
One of several voters who parked scooters outside a polling station to vote before going to work on Monday, Fabio, a 43-year-old consultant, said he was voting for Veltroni because "it's important to support a new vision of our political life."
Architect Nicola Afan De Rivera, 63, preferred Berlusconi, saying "the Berlusconi programme is more similar to my interests," while adding that he wanted electoral and judicial reforms as well as lower taxes.
Hoping to avoid the divisions of the centre-left coalition led by Romano Prodi that narrowly won in 2006, Veltroni spurned the far left and the centre when he set up his Democratic Party last year.
Berlusconi, a self-made billionaire who goes by the nickname Il Cavaliere (the knight), enjoyed a double-digit lead over Veltroni as campaigning began in February.
But two weeks ago, the last polls allowed ahead of the balloting reduced Berlusconi's edge to six or seven percent.
As the race tightened, chances grew that Berlusconi may fail to secure a viable majority in the Senate -- or even fall short in the upper house.
Legislation passed by Berlusconi's last goverment in 2006 allots Senate seats on a regional basis, which can lead to skewed results on the national level, since the winning list in each region automatically gets 55 percent of that region's seats while the runners-up split the rest.
Observers said the legislation had been a deliberate bid to limit Prodi's expected victory in the 2006 polls.
Official results may not be available until Tuesday, particularly if the Senate race is close.
Exit polls were expected soon after polling stations close at 3:00 pm (1300 GMT), and preliminary projections four hours later.
Story by Dby Gina Doggett from AFP
AFP 14 0944 GMT 04 08
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