On a sunny day north of Rome, people played football, walked to church with sprigs of olive branches to celebrate Passion Sunday and stopped off at bakeries to buy cakes for lunch. They also voted in large numbers at polling stations around the historic city of Viterbo in a general election to decide whether Silvio Berlusconi is ousted from power after five years as Italy’s Prime Minister.
It was a similar story across much of the country as blue skies, which traditionally boost abstention, failed to dissuade voters. Polls, which were banned in the final 15 days of campaigning, had predicted victory for the centre-left.
Lazio, the region in which Viterbo is situated, is a crucial marginal seat, having swung between the right and centre-left in both regional and national elections in recent years. A straw poll among the first to cast their votes there suggested the race between Berlusconi and the opposition leader, Romano Prodi, could still be tight.
The contest had already driven a wedge between Emanuela Ciccarelli and her husband, Alessandro. Ms Ciccarelli was on her way to vote for Berlusconi’s conservative coalition; her husband for Prodi’s centre-left alliance.
Ms Ciccarelli, a sales assistant in a clothing shop, said the 69-year-old prime minister had achieved a lot for the country. ”He’s created more jobs, he’s made Italy known all over the world and he’s done a lot of other good things, like giving â,¬1 000 to every baby born next year. I think we should keep faith with him,” she said.
Her husband interrupted. ”He should never have been in politics,” he said. The Mortadella, he added, referring to Prodi by his nickname, had the aspirations of all Italians at heart and would put in place the right policies to lead the country out of its financial mess, burdened as it was with a stagnant economy.
”I think his plan to crack down on people who don’t pay all their taxes is absolutely right,” he said. ”I pay my dues and everyone else should too. There are too many employers who think its OK to pay people on the black, and there are too many people who accept it,” he said.
Luigi Trabalsi, a pensioner, voted for Berlusconi in 2001 but chose to go for the opposition this time. ”Prodi is a man of the people,” he said. ”All Berlusconi has done is look after his own interests as a businessman. He doesn’t have the concerns of the ordinary person, who can’t pay his bills at the end of the month. He’s been a selfish man.”
Self-employed builder Elio Bacelli said he was still undecided about how to vote. He sat in a cafe several hundred metres from the polling station, reading an editorial in La Repubblica headlined: ”Nostalgia for politics when it was boring,” which criticised the candidates for threatening doom if the other side won.
”I have enough work, thank God, but the taxes kill me,” he said. ”I voted for Berlusconi last time so I’ll probably vote for him again, but to tell you the truth I don’t have much faith in either of them.”
Voting was also brisk at a primary school in the medieval hilltop village of Bagnoregio, about 19km east of Viterbo, which has traditionally voted for the left.
Enzo Fascetti, a retired businessman, said Berlusconi was the right man to lead Italy. ”He’s not a saint but he’s got big ideas and enthusiasm and he looks ahead,” he said. ”This isn’t any longer a world where the left can flourish — that old style of politics is over.”
One of his friends, Ferdinando Cocco, had voted for the centre-left, and another, Francesco Lattanzi, had voted for the right. Cocco, who worked in the film industry, said the left would invest more in the arts, which had been crippled by budget cuts.
Lattanzi said he thought the prime minister would win again but eventually be replaced by his deputy, Gianfranco Fini. ”The important thing is to let the government carry on with the work it has started. I think it would be too disruptive to change now,” he said.
By noon, 17,6% of electors had been to a polling station. That compared with 21,5% who voted in the last general election in 2001.
But, on this occasion, voting is to continue for a second day and will only end at 3pm local time on Monday.
The level of participation in the poll is thought to be crucial to the outcome: Berlusconi’s camp believes a high turnout will improve his chances of victory.
After casting his vote in his native Bologna, Prodi told reporters: ”I hope that everything will take place in a fair and calm manner.”
Berlusconi voted in his home city of Milan with his mother, Rosa, and remained controversial to the last. He was heard telling his mother to mark the symbol of his own party, Forza Italia, and was upbraided by polling officials for not respecting a ban on campaigning while voting was in progress.
”I can’t do that even with my mother?” Berlusconi asked.
Expat ballot
More than one million Italians living abroad voted in the country’s parliamentary election, according to a final tally on Sunday. It marked the first time that expatriates, including those in Britain, were allowed to vote in a general election without having to return home. Around 1,1-million Italians abroad, or 42% of those eligible, posted their ballots, the foreign ministry said on Saturday. About 2,6-million citizens abroad were eligible to elect 18 MPs who, for the first time, will represent their interests in the national legislature. The lawmakers will fill 12 new seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament, with six in the Senate. – Guardian Unlimited Â