By Sabina Zaccaro
ROME, Apr 10 2006 (IPS)

The first exit polls released Monday – after the polls closed at 3pm – showed the centre-left alliance of Romano Prodi sweeping to victory in Italy’s elections, confirming pre-election opinion surveys. But then came the surprise.

The real vote results, released later in the evening, have shown the race between Prodi’s alliance and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition as too close to call.

This situation reflects a country divided, both ideologically and geographically, with the richer North supporting a conservative position; the central region more left-oriented; and the South, which had chosen the centre-left in last year administrative elections, now tilting to the right.

Both coalitions expressed great surprise by the preliminary vote tally, presaging a difficult debate about the future of Italy, a country that needs immediate economic revival and a renewed confidence in its own capabilities.

The centre-left coalition leaders were especially caught off guard, believing that Italians longed for – and would vote for – definite change after five years of suffering extremely low economic growth.

Pre-election surveys, so trusted during the campaign, and exit polls have proved fallible. But all political parties agree that the new electoral law on proportional representation affected the outcome, creating a great deal of uncertainty.

Voters cast ballots to elect 630 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 315 senators under the proportional systme pushed through legislation in the final months by Berlusconi’s government to improve the chances that the smaller parties in his coalition would win seats in parliament.

To ensure that the future government gains a workable majority under the new system, the rules state that the winning coalition will receive a minimum 340 seats in the lower house, regardless of what its margin of victory is. The remaining 290 seats will be assigned to the opposition.

The new electoral law includes a so-called “majority prize” that awards the winner a minimum of 54 percent of the seats in the lower Chamber of Deputies. The majority bonus doesn’t work as cleanly in the Senate, which selects candidates regionally, meaning only a landslide victory would produce a margin of more than a dozen in the 315-seat assembly.

Berlusconi, who managed to win an absolute majority in both houses in 2001 under the previous voting system, has held a 20-seat majority in the Senate.

Most observers didn’t predict such a dramatic impact by the new proportional system, and political leaders are likely hashing out the details through the post-election night.

Commentators point to the effectiveness of Berlusconi’s aggressive campaign, with the government going after the opposition, contrary to the usual campaign politicking, in which the opposition lambasts the incumbent’s record.

In the final days of the campaign, Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition and his economy minister, Giulio Tremonti, had tried to convince voters that Prodi’s platform, if elected, would have driven up taxes. The leftist Union leader was thus forced to make a significant effort to reassure the electorate.

“What we want is a fairer country,” Prodi said in a recent interview. “Our approach can be clearly explained with the words of the great Swedish socialist leader Olof Palme, which represent our manifesto: ‘We don’t combat richness, we combat poverty’.”

Prodi’s coalition believed that Italians had suffered enough from a stalled economy, which affects families and the whole public system. For example, under the national health system, a patient has to wait months for a routine heart exam.

The country’s debt and unemployment are the other hot issues which reveal the two coalitions’ very different approaches.

Prodi, a former European Commission president, had vowed to kick-start Italy’s stagnant economy and “bring back harmony and unity” to a divided country after five years of centre-right rule. “The centre-left coalition will restore dialogue, internally and with other European countries,” he said in an interview at the end of the electoral campaign.

Monday’s contentious outcome could mean holding a whole new election. But it would be impossible before summer, because of the election of the new President of the Republic – whose seven year mandate is ending in April – and only the president can call new elections.

Another option would be to establish a broader coalition between the bigger parties from both Prodi’s Union and Berlusconi’s House of Freedoms, similar to the negotiated coalition achieved in Germany last year.

Paolo Mieli, director of “Corriere della Sera” daily newspaper, said Berlusconi had a spectacular recovery, able to hold the political stage every single day of his campaign. The prime minister was able to reinforce his Forza Italia party without pulling votes away from his allies.

According to Mieli, even if Prodi’s Union wins, the House of Freedom would remain strong, and this is a sign of a mature democracy where coalitions alternate in power without destroying each other.

According to Nexus pollsters, at 1am on local time on Tuesday, Apr. 11, the two coalitions were in a draw both for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

Nexus decided to stop processing projections due to the impossibility of determining the winner in such a close race. The final picture is so left to the official count, down to the last vote.

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