Recount leaves Italy facing the unknown

JUDGES began checking thousands of contested ballots yesterday, with Italian politics in turmoil following Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s demand for a recount of rival Romano Prodi’s narrow parliamentary election victory.

Official returns gave Mr Prodi’s centre-left coalition the majority in both houses of parliament in the elections but the margin was a mere 25,000 votes in the lower Chamber of Deputies.

Mr Prodi insisted his victory was safe. “There is nothing to worry about; we are serene,” he said in Bologna.

But Mr Berlusconi has refused to concede, saying that the margin of victory was slim enough to require “a scrupulous check to ascertain any possible error or irregularity”.

Judges were examining 43,000 ballots in the lower house and 39,000 in the Senate that were not immediately included in the overall official count because there were possible problems with them, but not enough to invalidate them outright.

Newspapers and politicians say checks so far indicate the ballots would not change the balance.

Experts say statistically and historically, it is unlikely that either side would be able to win 50% of contested ballots. Electoral experts say that recuperating 20%-25% of the contested ballots is already a high figure.

“I don’t think they will change the outcome of elections,” Lorenzo Cesa, a Berlusconi ally, said, speaking of the contested ballots.

A member of Mr Prodi’s coalition, Greens leader Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio claimed that so far more of the contested ballots were assigned to his centre-left coalition than to Berlusconi’s conservatives.

But Mr Berlusconi also has demanded checks “one by one” of at least 60,000 polling stations - almost all of them - and more than one million annulled ballots.

“I’m confident. The results must change,” the combative conservative leader said after meeting with the president. “You thought you were rid of me?”

His comments raised the heat in a country already weary from a long, bitter electoral campaign, divided almost evenly between the centre-left and centre-right coalitions.

Italy’s leading daily, the Corriere della Sera, said Berlusconi’s challenge leaves Italy “even more divided than during the electoral campaign”.

The paper compared Italy’s in-limbo status to the 2000 presidential race in the US, when the election hinged on a recount in the key state of Florida.

“It is difficult not to fear a kind of ‘Italian-style Florida’,” Corriere said.

The dispute could usher in extended uncertainty over the results, a process which could take weeks. The outcome of the election must be approved by Italy’s highest court, and it is up to the president to give the head of the winning coalition a mandate to form a government. However, the president’s term ends in mid-May, and current president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, said he would leave the decision up to his successor.

Parliament convenes on April 28 and has until May 13 to elect a new president, meaning a new government would not be formed until mid-May at the earliest.