Italy: Regional elections , a test.. [ 820]

Regional elections seen as test

Italians to vote in 13 of country's 20 regions

26 March, 17:26

(ANSA) - Rome, March 26 - More than 40 million Italians go to the polls Sunday and Monday in regional elections which are widely heralded as the first major test for Premier Silvio Berlusconi's two-year-old government.

The premier has turned the vote in 13 of the country's 20 regions into a sort of referendum for his centre-right coalition, telling Italians they must choose between his "can-do government" and the "small-talking Left".

The opposition, which currently holds 11 of the 13 regions, says the campaign has not focused on the real issues, including increasing unemployment and the ongoing recession. On Friday, however, Democratic Party (PD) leader Pier Luigi Bersani, admitted that Italians had an opportunity to send Berlusconi a clear-cut message.

"We can't think of bringing down the government with the regional vote but we can send Berlusconi a wee little message...Have you got it? The time has come to talk about the country's problems, not yours," referring to the premier's attempts to approve legislation which would freeze two corruption trials against in Milan. Berlusconi has spent the last week on the campaign trail, addressing a mass Rome rally on Saturday and then touring major Italian cities to personally canvass on behalf of his People of Freedom (PdL) party candidates.

In a video-taped message posted on the PdL's website on Friday, he warned Italians to "do the right thing" and vote for "your very own freedom".

The media magnate-turned politician is thought to be concerned by reports of possible low turnout at the polls, which would hurt his PdL party rather than the opposition, whose supporters traditionally turn out in greater numbers. Berlusconi has also had to brush off reports that his key Northern League ally may overtake his PdL party in the two northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto where it is fielding its own candidates.

Although Northern League leader Umberto Bossi has "ruled out repercussions in the coalition", Berlusconi said in an interview published Friday that voters should bear in mind that "the PdL is the coalition linchpin".

Observers say that, despite Bossi's proclaimed loyalty to Berlusconi, a strong showing for the League would nevertheless create problems within the PdL because it would weaken House Speaker Gianfranco Fini's strength in the coalition and the premier's own charisma.

Fini, whose own National Alliance party merged with Berlusconi's Forza Italia party to form the PdL last year, has also frayed tempers by increasingly distancing himself from the premier and the League on a number of key issues, including voting rights for immigrants.

According to media close to Berlusconi, including his brother's Il Giornale daily, Fini - who has not taken an active part in the campaign - is thinking of pulling out of the PdL and recreating his own party to seek an alliance with the centrist opposition parties. The campaign has been especially bitter, amidst a corruption probe involving a key Berlusconi aide, investigations into the premier's alleged attempt to muzzle TV talk shows critical of his government and the exclusion of the PdL from the race in the Rome province because of election-filing blunders.

Berlusconi has denied the filing blunders and has accused allegedly left-leaning magistrates called to decide on election registration procedures of trying to swing the vote for the centre left.

He accuses allegedly left-leaning magistrates of undermining Italian democracy, and has pledged a wide-ranging overhaul of the judicial system over the next three years.

In a message to his Freedom Club supporters last week, Berlusconi said that ever since his entry into politics in 1994 "ahead of any new election, the manifest alliance between the Left and a part of the judiciary unduly steps into the campaign to swing the vote".

The premier said judicial cases against him are whipped up "like clockwork" at election time and "blown up by obliging dailies". But centrist opposition leader Pier Ferdinando Casini claims that Berlusconi is clearly worried about losing consensus because voters know he has failed to solve the country's problems despite having a huge parliamentary majority.

"Italians voted him in to solve their problems and two years later what's happened: nothing, zero. The government has not dealt with a single issue".

A poll published by Milan daily Corriere della Sera before a two-week publication ban came into effect showed that four of the 13 regions are still up for grabs while six should be won by the centre left and three by the centre right.

Centre-right Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno has said the coalition would be able to claim victory only if it grabs five regions.