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BBC News/Tuesday 11 April 2006
Italy's centre-left opposition has won a narrow victory in the lower house of parliament, official results say.
It won 49.8% of the vote against 49.7% for the centre-right, according to interior ministry figures.
The head of the centre-left coalition, former Prime Minister Romano Prodi, told cheering supporters in Rome: "Victory has arrived."
But the claim has been contested by the ruling centre-right coalition of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
His spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti said his bloc would demand a "scrupulous" check of election ballots.
The winning coalition will automatically be awarded 55% of the lower house seats - 340 in total - under a new electoral law.
Mr Berlusconi's coalition currently has a lead of one seat in the Senate, with six seats voted for by expatriates still to be declared.
The centre-left Union says it believes it will win four of those seats, giving it an overall majority.
The lower and upper houses have equal power in Italy's electoral system. One bloc must win both to prevent parliamentary stalemate.
Acrimonious Campaign
Mr Prodi told a crowd in central Rome: "Today, we have turned a page... We will govern for five years."
But emotions were also high amongst the ruling centre-right bloc who faced losing power.
"This is intolerable. What is this? A coup? It reminds me of South America. Auto proclamation (of victory) is constitutionally illegitimate," Industry Minister Claudio Scajola said.
Mr Berlusconi, a billionaire businessman and media magnate, has been in office since 2001.
He has led Italy's longest-serving government since World War II, but the economy has proven sluggish for much of his tenure.
Voter turnout was high. More than 83% of the electorate cast a vote.
Ailing Economy
Exit polls released straight after the voting ended, suggested that Mr Prodi's coalition had gained a narrow victory.
But as the evening went on the situation changed and confusion grew over the outcome, leading to wild swings of emotion among supporters on both sides.
The formation of a new government will have to wait until after the election of a new Italian president next month. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi's seven-year term of office is about to expire.
The campaign was marked by acrimony, with Mr Berlusconi mocking left-wing voters and Mr Prodi likening him to a drunkard. Mr Berlusconi's coalition has failed to revive the ailing economy
Mr Prodi, a former Italian prime minister and president of the European Commission, was narrowly ahead in most opinion polls until they were suspended 10 days ago under electoral law.
His mild-mannered - some say lacklustre - style contrasts sharply with Mr Berlusconi's media-savvy flamboyance.
Mr Berlusconi has battled to fend off prosecution for alleged corruption and conflict of interest over his media empire.
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Challenger Claims Italian Election Win
CBS News and The Associated Press
Tuesday 11 April 2006
Center-left challenger Romano Prodi claimed victory Tuesday over Premier Silvio Berlusconi in parliamentary elections, and said he would form a "strong" government, even though the official vote count had not completed.
Prodi told a news conference that his government would be "politically and technically" strong, rebutting concerns about an apparent slim margin of victory. The former European Union commissioner also said his government would put Europe at the center of its policies.
"This is a profoundly European result, and as I said, Europe will be the center of the policy of my government," Prodi said, also promising "constructive relations with the United States."
He made the comments after his center-left coalition claimed it had won four of the outstanding six seats in the Senate, parliament's upper chamber an outcome which, if confirmed, would give it the necessary margin to declare victory.
The Interior Ministry, however, was still counting the Senate vote.
Berlusconi's camp did not concede the election and called for a recount in the lower Chamber of Deputies, where final results gave Prodi's coalition a razor-thin margin. Berlusconi is expected to hold a press conference Tuesday, CBS News reports.
Prodi said he wasn't concerned about the recount call and conceded his margin was thin. But he said previous governments have been weaker.
Final returns Tuesday showed Prodi winning the lower Chamber of Deputies by one tenth of a percentage point, 49.8 to 49.7 percent. Under Italian electoral law, 55 percent of seats are awarded to the overall winner regardless of the scale of victory, giving Prodi's forces 340 seats in the 630-member lower house.
All eyes were on the Senate, however, which Prodi also needed to win to form a government.
The Senate outcome depended on votes cast by Italians living overseas, which were still being counted Tuesday. Prodi's coalition claimed at least four of the six seats, giving it the necessary margin for victory, but official results hadn't yet been released.
The election marks the first time Italian citizens living abroad had the right to vote by mail in a parliamentary election, thanks to a 2001 law sponsored by Berlusconi's conservative government soon after it came to power.
The law created four huge electoral districts to represent Italians who live overseas. Eighteen lawmakers will be chosen to represent this new constituency, 12 in the Chamber of Deputies and six in the Senate.
Politicians crisscrossed continents and flew across oceans in a scramble to win over the 2.6 million voters abroad. Politicians particularly focused on Argentina, home to hundreds of thousands of Italians. There were about 400,000 eligible Italian voters in the North and Central America expatriate district.
At the close of the deadline for submitting ballots on Thursday, the Italian Consulate in New York, where the highest number of Italian citizens in the United States are concentrated, said it had received more than 18,000 ballots.
During his tenure as premier, Berlusconi, a flamboyant billionaire, had strongly supported President Bush over Iraq despite fierce Italian opposition to the war. Prodi, an economist, said he would bring troops home as soon as possible, security conditions permitting. But the issue was largely deflated before the campaign began, when Berlusconi announced that Italy's troops there would be withdrawn by year's end.
The vote followed a bitter election campaign in which the two main contenders traded personal insults, CBS News' Sabina Castelfranco reports.
For hours after the vote ended Monday, projections and returns swung dramatically back and forth between the two sides, and without the vote from abroad, the election's outcome was still unclear. Voter turnout was about 84 percent.
The Senate and lower chamber of parliament have equal powers, and any coalition would have to control both in order to form a government. Some center-left and center-right leaders have said if neither side controls both houses, new elections should be called.
Final results in the lower house showed Prodi's coalition winning 49.8 percent of the vote compared to 49.7 percent for Berlusconi's conservatives. The winning coalition is automatically awarded 340 seats in the 630-member chamber.
The Senate is made up of 315 elected lawmakers. There are also seven senators appointed for life, but by tradition they do not take sides.
If parliament is split between the two coalitions, Pres?dent Carlo Azeglio Ciampi could try to name a government of technocrats at least until another election. He could also seek to fashion a coalition of left and right, but considering the bitter divisions among Italy's political parties, that seemed unlikely.
There is no clear provision in the Italian constitution to deal with a split parliament, and there are no precedents.
"These results mean the country is divided in two. There needs to be a provisional government for a few months, then new elections," said Marco Piva, a 49-year-old banker from Padova, as he took the train to work Tuesday morning. "This is the worst result that we could have had."
Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione and several other politicians said early Tuesday that both sides must pull together, if only to handle urgent economic matters and the election of a new president after Ciampi's mandate expires in May.
"We have to immediately send a message to the markets, to whomever wants to invest in Italy that the country is not going to fall apart," he said.
Berlusconi, a 69-year-old media mogul and Italy's longest-serving premier since World War II, was battling to capture his third term with an often squabbling coalition of his Forza Italia party, the former neo-fascist National Alliance, pro-Vatican forces and the anti-immigrant Northern League.
The 66-year-old Prodi, a former premier, was making his comeback bid with a potentially unwieldy coalition of moderate Christian Democrats, Greens, liberals, former Communists and Communists.
Italians were mainly preoccupied by economic worries. Berlusconi failed to jump-start a flat economy during his tenure, but promised to abolish a homeowner's property tax. Prodi said he would revive an inheritance tax abolished by Berlusconi, but only for the richest; he also promised to cut payroll taxes to try to spur hiring.
During his tenure, Berlusconi had strongly supported President Bush over Iraq despite fierce Italian opposition to the war. Prodi said he would bring troops home as soon as possible, security conditions permitting. But the issue was largely deflated before the campaign began when Berlusconi announced that Italy's troops there would be withdrawn by year's end.
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