Berlusconi threatens to fight election before votes are final
As one of the nastiest and strangest election campaigns in modern European history ground to a halt this weekend for two days of voting that end this afternoon, Mr. Berlusconi threatened to challenge the results. [..]
As if to guarantee an unstable result, in his final speech on Saturday, Mr. Berlusconi threatened to bring in United Nations observers, implying that he would not accept the results of a negative vote.
"There's a clear alliance between the major newspapers, the banks and the courts to plot against me," said Mr. Berlusconi, who owns or controls all seven of Italy's TV networks. "With the newspapers on their side and the TV stations behaving as if they are, we need United Nations observers to monitor electoral fraud." [..]
[The next bit, about the positions of the "left" and "right", could have been written exactly the same way about
the Hungarian elections, btw - interesting - nimh]
It is in many ways a topsy-turvy election. Mr. Berlusconi, the conservative leader of a coalition of parties that range from centre-right to almost fascist, has built his campaign on increased government spending. He has vowed to give 1,000 (about $1,400) to anyone who has a child in an effort to improve Italy's dismal birth rate, and to expand the country's infrastructure, along with lavish tax cuts.
His promises, according to an estimate made on Friday by the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, will cost Italy between 36-billion and 101-billion a year.
Conversely, Mr. Prodi campaigned on fiscal prudence and economic liberalization, part of a trend across Europe in which parties of the left have often proven more adept at free-market economics than those of the right.
Mr. Prodi, 70, who served as Italian prime minister in the 1990s and later as European Union commissioner, is known for his fiscal rigour. He spent much of the campaign boasting of his boring, "calm" personality, a pointed contrast to Mr. Berlusconi's penchant for outrageous remarks.
It may have worked. As the campaign went on, Mr. Berlusconi likened himself to Jesus, claimed that the Chinese boil their babies, and characterized his opponents as "dickheads."
Such comments meant that Mr. Berlusconi dominated the front pages of Italian newspapers on almost every day of the election campaign, leading Mr. Prodi's advisers to attempt a few awkward efforts at flashiness. [..]
Never to be outdone, Mr. Berlusconi managed to end his campaigning Saturday on a characteristically embarrassing note.
Taking a group of schoolchildren on an impromptu tour of his official residence in Rome, he informed them, without provocation, that "all women over 23 in show business" have had breast enlargements.
Whether that pronouncement marked his last statement in office or not will be known today.
