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Nearly a third of Italians still undecided about election: poll
ROME | Tue Feb 19, 2013 7:33am EST
(Reuters) - Five days before national elections almost a third of Italians have yet to decide who to vote for or are considering not voting at all, a survey showed on Tuesday, highlighting uncertainty over the outcome.
The poll in Corriere della Sera daily showed the proportion of Italians undecided or tempted to abstain has declined from 51.5 percent in December but remains at a significant 27.7 percent less than a week before the vote on Sunday and Monday.
Final polls on February 8, before a legal black-out period set in, indicated that the center-left Democratic Party would win a lower house majority but will need to form a coalition with outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti's centrist grouping.
Silvio Berlusconi's center-right alliance was about 6 percentage points behind the frontrunners. But the hefty proportion of undecided voters means the outcome is still unpredictable and the final days of campaigning will be crucial.
Publication of polls is illegal in the two weeks leading up to the February 24-25 election but analysts are permitted to reveal data on likely participation rates.
Most of the undecided are middle-aged housewives or pensioners with relatively low education levels, mainly living in the south of Italy, and with little interest in politics, pollster Renato Mannheimer of the ISPO institute said.
"More than half of those who are currently undecided or potential abstainers say they can't place themselves on the right or the left," Mannheimer told the Milan daily.
He added it was likely that many people who were yet to decide would probably not vote, based on past electoral trends.
But historical participation rates suggest about 5 million people, or 10 percent of voters, will make up their minds in the last few days, swayed by last-minute promises from party leaders regardless of their place on the political spectrum, he said.
Many polls over the last year have shown Italians disenchanted with a political class clinging to its privileges as the euro zone's third biggest but chronically uncompetitive economy descended deeper into crisis.
Fans shower Berlusconi with adulation before Italy vote
By Sara Rossi and Danilo Masoni
MILAN | Tue Feb 19, 2013 8:07am EST
(Reuters) - Silvio Berlusconi's supporters greeted him with adulation, chants and adoring cheers when he appeared at one of his final rallies before an election in five days, assuring the party faithful that victory was at hand.
The 76-year-old media magnate once again showed off his energy during a rally at Milan's exhibition centre on Monday night, regaling an enchanted crowd of around 1,500 supporters for at least 90 minutes with attacks on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and outgoing technocrat prime minister Mario Monti.
Despite a lurid sex scandal dogging the four-times premier and his regular off-colour jokes, many of his fans were women with no doubts about their hero's ability to pull off yet another political victory against the odds.
Pollsters say that despite an extraordinary fightback since entering the campaign in December, the conservative Berlusconi was still 4-5 percentage points behind the centre-left coalition when the last opinion surveys were published 10 days ago.
Italy bans the publication of polls in the two weeks before an election, but he told fans the tide had turned:
"I must give you some good news. Very good indeed. We have caught them up and overtaken them," said Berlusconi, dressed in an expensively tailored dark suit.
"I believe the election will bring many good surprises."
He was preaching to the converted.
"Our family always votes for Berlusconi: my husband, me and my children. Berlusconi is our only hope in life. How can you vote for anybody else?" said Giovannina Michelon, 74.
Another supporter, accounting clerk Stella D'Antonio, 42, told Reuters: "Silvio is really nice. I vote for Berlusconi because I still believe in him. He is a good man, a good prime minister, a good dad, a good grandfather.
"Why do we have to talk badly about him?"
D'Antonio said she had been to several parties where she had met Berlusconi, who had a brief early career as a singer.
Asked about his affairs and allegations that he held "bunga bunga" sex parties with aspiring starlets, she said: "It is women who throw themselves on him."
SEX TRIAL
Berlusconi is on trial in Milan for having sex with an underage prostitute. Hearings are on hold until after the vote.
Although his sex and fraud scandals have sapped support for his centre-right party the People of Freedom (PDL), they have done nothing to undermine the faith of his most dedicated fans.
A lone heckler, who threw a paper dart bearing the words "You have ruined us", was roughly bustled out by marshals, pursued by indignant Berlusconi supporters yelling obscenities.
The rally had all the slick trappings associated with Berlusconi, a self-made billionaire and master communicator who has run rings around his colorless opponents, centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani and outgoing premier Mario Monti, in the charisma stakes.
Before he took the stage, the audience watched videos about his life from childhood to today, including an interview with his late mother saying she had told him as a child he would become something big.
They were shown segments about the successes of his Mediaset media empire and matches won by his soccer team AC Milan, both of which emphasize the rags to riches success story that is one of Berlusconi's biggest attractions for voters.
The national anthem was played as he climbed on the stage, beaming as the crowd chanted: "Silvio, Silvio, Silvio."
Cesare Morgantini, 37, who owns a fashion agency, said: "Since I started voting I have always voted for Berlusconi. I cannot vote for the left because I belong to a business family. We are big fans of the right. I am hoping for a great victory."
Berlusconi launched his familiar attack on Monti's tax hikes and on Merkel, accusing the German conservative leader of damaging the whole of Europe with austerity policies.
The rally was held jointly with the federalist Northern League, a vital ally for Berlusconi in winning potentially crucial Senate upper house seats in Italy's northern regions.
But League leader Roberto Maroni got little attention from the crowd and made only a short speech.
Undermined by the sex scandal, Berlusconi was forced from power and replaced by Monti, a former EU commissioner, in November 2011, as Italy slid towards a Greek-style debt crisis.
He spent much of the following year in the shadows as Monti restored Italy's international credentials and sharply brought down borrowing costs. The PDL slumped to around 15 percent in polls, compared to 38 percent when they won power in 2008.
But since returning to the frontline in December, Berlusconi has hoisted the party to around 20 percent, and the centre right overall to around 29 percent, compared to about 35 percent for the centre left, according to the last polls in early February.
On Tuesday, he renewed criticism of Europe's common currency policy that has struck a chord with Italians who bemoan their inability to regain competitiveness by devaluing, as they often did with the lira. "Some countries" could ditch the euro if the European Central Bank was not prepared to print more money, Berlusconi said, without specifying whether Italy might do so.
He has also whittled away at the left's lead with promises not only to cut a hated new property tax but to pay it back and create millions of jobs - policies ridiculed by his opponents.
(Writing by Barry Moody; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Alastair Macdonald)
By Naomi O'Leary
ROME | Tue Feb 19, 2013 8:07am EST
(Reuters) - As Italy's parliamentary elections approach, the parties battling to win over undecided voters are focusing increasingly on tax, the issue that polls show matters most to an electorate struggling after more than a year of austerity.
Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has singled out the hated IMU housing tax as the centrepiece of his campaign, promising not only to abolish it but to refund last year's payments in cash at post office counters.
He has also said he would like to introduce a general amnesty on penalties for people who haven't paid their taxes, a measure he says will encourage late-payers to come forward but which his opponents say is tantamount to encouraging evasion.
It is a strategy that has drawn condemnation from rivals, including outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, who introduced the IMU tax as he battled to gain control over the debt crisis left behind when the last Berlusconi government left office.
But rising opinion poll ratings for Berlusconi's bloc suggest his ideas have resonated with voters, as they did in 2008 when a similar pledge to scrap an earlier version of the housing tax was widely credited with helping him defeat centre-left leader Romano Prodi.
"Those who don't pay are right," said Maria, a retired school teacher in Rome, who declined to give her surname for fear of prosecution by Italy's financial police. "We all know what it's for. It's so that impostor Monti can pay off the debts of his banking friends, who wrecked the economy."
The last opinion polls published before a pre-election blackout suggest the centre-left is still leading Berlusconi's centre-right bloc. But as many as 30 percent of voters are still undecided ahead of the election on February 24-25, according to pollsters.
Italian taxpayers have the fourth heaviest tax burden in the 34-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, behind only Denmark, Sweden and Belgium, according to the latest figures from the Paris-based group of rich countries.
Although the IMU tax on property owners' primary residences, set at 0.4 percent of the value of a home, is comparable to other property levies across Europe, it arouses a near-allergic reaction in Italy.
"The house is sacred. It should not be taxed," Berlusconi has repeated relentlessly in his daily television and radio appearances.
Berlusconi says the tax raises just 4 billion euros, a sum that could easily be raised by cutting spending in other areas such as state funding to political parties.
Although other parties have attacked him over the details of his plans, the two other main blocks in the election - the centre-left and even Monti's centrists - have since said they would look into cutting back the tax.
TAX EVASION
After more than a year of the austerity imposed by the Monti government, eight in ten Italians want taxes to be cut, according to a poll from the Eurispes institute.
According to a separate survey last month by the SWG polling institute, 28 percent of voters would like to see the next government lower IMU immediately, the same number that would like to see income tax go down.
With Italy's public finances weighed down by a debt equivalent to more than 126 percent of gross domestic product and memories of last year's market crisis still fresh, the scope for cutting taxes is extremely limited.
And in a country that has long had an ambivalent relationship with the taxman, the next government will face heavy pressure to address the chronic problem of tax evasion, which economists say cost 120 billion euro a year.
High taxes, combined with a perception that public services are inadequate, has been "an incentive to evasion" according to LUISS University tax law professor Livia Salvini.
The state has also mishandled collection by making it complicated to pay taxes, passing a multitude of sometimes-contradictory laws, and granting repeated amnesties for evaders, she said.
Decades of incessant political corruption scandals have hammered in the message that taxes are ill-used, worsened by a widespread perception that public services are inadequate.
"Taxes must be lowered, but above all they must be spent better. They have been wasted in the past," said publisher Gian Claudio Pitorri, 60.
Berlusconi says some countries may have to leave euro
ROME | Tue Feb 19, 2013 7:33am EST
(Reuters) - Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is seeking his fifth term in government, restated on Tuesday that some countries may be forced to leave the euro zone if the European Central Bank does not become a lender of last resort.
"The euro is a weak currency because it does not have a central bank to support it," Berlusconi told daily Corriere della Sera's internet television.
"If it continues to not have a bank to guarantee government bonds and is not prepared to print money, some countries may be forced to return to their national currency," he said.
The 76-year-old media tycoon has made similar remarks in the past about the possibility of Italy, or even Germany leaving the euro, but has often at least partially rectified them later.
