Italian general election too close to call

ROME - Italy's election is still too close to call, with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his rival Romano Prodi neck-and-neck in a race that has split the nation and raised the specter of chronic political instability.

More than 10 hours after voting stations closed, Italy's two main political blocks both claimed to be ahead in the race for the upper house (Senate), while Prodi's center-left alliance was slightly ahead in the lower house count.

However, a leading pollster declined to declare a winner, saying the vote in both houses was balanced on a knife's edge.

"The exceptional draw in both the upper and lower house does not enable us to give an indication on the final outcome of the election," said the Nexus research institute, which had earlier declared first Prodi winner and later Berlusconi.

Prodi, making his first public comment on the election, told cheering fans in central Rome that he was hopeful of victory but said full results were not yet available.

"I ask you all to keep patient. This delay is incomprehensible," said Prodi, 66, who had pinned his hopes of victory on widespread discontent over the stagnant economy.

The result looked certain to be the closest in modern Italian history and pushed politicians into uncertain territory.

"The scenario right now is that either we win by a narrow margin or they win by a narrow margin," said Fabrizio Cicchitto, co-ordinator of Berlusconi's Forza Italia (Go Italy) party.

"With such a tight balance of power it will certainly be difficult to govern ... (Fresh elections) are one of the possibilities, but we can't decide this now," he said.

Berlusconi had trailed in the opinion polls for two years, but he fought a tenacious campaign, wrong-footing Prodi in the final week by promising to abolish an unpopular property tax.

Under Italy's controversial new electoral system, rushed into law late last year, the winning side will automatically be granted 340 of the 630 seats in the lower house of parliament no matter how small its margin of victory in the popular vote.

However, the counting system is different for the 315-seat Senate and pollsters predicted that the eventual winner might just have a one-seat majority.

Analysts said a hung parliament might also emerge.

Italy's two houses of parliament duplicate each other's functions and a government needs the support of both to take office and to pass laws.

Labor Minister Roberto Maroni of the Northern League party said the vote resembled the 2000 US presidential election, which ended in a bitter recount battle in the state of Florida.

"The level pegging is very similar to what happened in Florida. With one vote more or one vote less, you lose or you win," said Maroni.

Some analysts suggested that in the case of a hung parliament, the two blocs might agree to form a grand coalition, as happened recently in Germany. However, League leader Umberto Bossi appeared to rule this out saying it would resolve nothing.

The interior ministry said turnout was a high 83.6 per cent against 81.4 per cent in 2001. Berlusconi had argued that a turnout above 82 per cent would give his coalition victory.

Prodi's center-left alliance, which stretches from Roman Catholic centrists to communists, expected to tap into voter unhappiness over the stagnant economy and rising cost of living.

However, Berlusconi painted his opponents as a tax-obsessed coalition that would bleed the middle classes dry.

Center-left supporters gathered in front of Prodi's headquarters in an elegant Rome square on Monday afternoon expecting to celebrate an easy victory, but the smiles soon faded as new results flashed up on big television screens.

Just round the corner in the cobbled streets near the Trevi fountain, another group was experiencing opposite emotions at the headquarters of Forza Italia.

"When I heard the first results I was crying. Tears, tears, tears," said Giulio Clarioni, a 19-year-old right-wing voter. "And now it looks like we might even be ahead and the victory that Prodi announced is going to have to wait until 2011."

Whoever emerges as winner will inherit the task of cutting the world's third-largest national debt pile while trying to breathe new life into an economy that grew an average of 0.6 per cent a year under Berlusconi.

Italy's future is complicated by the fact that the mandate of President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the supreme arbiter of national politics, expires in May.

It is up to the president formally to appoint the new prime minister and Ciampi says he wants to leave the task to his successor, who must be picked by the incoming parliament.

This will slow the formation of a new government.

- REUTERS