Berlusconi may order partial recount

Silvio Berlusconi

ROME - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is considering issuing a decree to order a partial recount of Italy's general election results after denouncing the poll as fraudulent, newspapers reported last night.

Berlusconi demanded early yesterday that his centre-left rival Romano Prodi be stripped of victory in the April 9-10 ballot, pushing Europe's fourth largest economy towards a full-blown political crisis.

According to Interior Ministry data, the centre left won the election for the lower house of parliament by just 25,000 votes out of 38.1 million ballots cast.

Berlusconi has refused to concede defeat, saying he has evidence of widespread voting irregularities.

Under Italian law only a handful of disputed votes can be reviewed immediately after an election, but newspapers said Berlusconi might use his powers as caretaker prime minister to issue a decree that would widen the post-election scrutiny.

The increasingly bitter stand-off tempted comparisons with the 2000 US presidential election, when victory was handed to George W. Bush following a recount battle in Florida.

"At this point it is difficult not to fear a sort of Italian-style Florida. A long, destabilising confrontation over the regularity of more than one million votes," Corriere della Sera newspaper wrote.

"The only thing is that here one can't see a final agreed conclusion," it added.

Prodi has condemned Berlusconi's efforts to overturn the election result and his allies accused the prime minister of stoking dangerous political tensions.

"Berlusconi, stop poisoning Italy and delegitimising the Italians' vote," Piero Fassino, head of the biggest leftist party, the Democrats of the Left, said.

The post-election confusion is likely to unsettle financial markets, already fretful that Prodi will not have a big enough majority to push through unpopular reforms needed to revive Italy's chronically underperforming economy.

Berlusconi earlier this week demanded a review of 43,000 disputed ballots not included in the final tally because of alleged errors over the way they were filled out.

Yesterday, he suggested the problem might be much bigger, saying "60,000 statements" of possible irregularities had to be checked "one by one".

In all, the Interior Ministry said just over a million votes had not been included in the official tally because they had been left blank or defaced. This was 60 per cent fewer than the number of void votes in the 2001 election.

"Did you think you would be free of me?" Berlusconi told reporters after meeting President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Routine checks on the 43,000 disputed ballots are being carried out by judicial authorities and are expected to be completed by tomorrow. The prime minister said the review he had in mind would take "several days" to complete.

Newspapers said the routine review of disputed ballots did not seem to have found grounds so far for changing the results.

Corriere said that in one electoral college in the northern region Veneto, only four of 20 disputed ballot papers had been assigned to Berlusconi's Forza Italia after review. In Milan and Naples, the left was winning back more votes than the right.

La Repubblica said that in an electoral college in the central region of Lazio, 29 disputed votes had been assigned to the centre right and 19 to the centre left.

Even without accusations of fraud, Italy faces at least a month of limbo before a new government can be sworn in.

Under the constitution, it is up to the head of state to nominate a new government after consultation with party leaders.

Prodi had wanted Ciampi to quickly name him prime minister but the president, whose term ends on May 18, believes it is the duty of his successor.

The new parliament is due to convene on April 28 and is not scheduled to vote on a successor to Ciampi until May 12-13.

- REUTERS