Italian election turmoil continues

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

Official returns gave 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.

Prodi insisted his victory was safe. “There is nothing to worry about; we are serene,” he said in Bologna, according to Italy’s ANSA and Apcom news agencies.

But Berlusconi has refused to concede, saying last night 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 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 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 last night 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, and 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 United States, when the election hinged on a recount in the key state of Florida.

“At this point, it is difficult not to fear a kind of ’Italian-style Florida'," Corriere said.

The dispute could usher in an extended period of 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 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 the current president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, has said he would leave the decision up to his successor.

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