Italy’s Voters Get a Virtual TV Debate

“Blob,” a television show that exposes gaffes by newscasters, actors and other VIPs, aired a lively exchange this week between conservative tycoon Silvio Berlusconi and Rome’s former mayor, Francesco Rutelli, the opposing candidates for prime minister of Italy.

They were interrupted several times by close-up film of predatory insects--an odd clue that the three-minute segment was a hoax. The debate, it turned out, had been filmed a year ago, before regional elections; the producers of “Blob” say they aired it to ridicule Berlusconi’s refusal to debate his rival in Sunday’s race.

The 64-year-old media mogul, who claims to be “the best leader in the world,” is ignoring the center-left underdog in one of the more bitter and personalized campaigns in Italy’s postwar history. Rutelli’s closing flurry of attacks has only compounded a sense that the ballot is a referendum on the nation’s richest individual.

Berlusconi is projecting a victory margin of 15 percentage points for his center-right Freedom Alliance coalition in the contest for control of Parliament. Rutelli’s Olive Tree coalition, which has governed for the last five years, claims that it is 3 points behind in its own polls and closing in. When publication of polls was halted by law two weeks before the vote, independent surveys put Berlusconi’s lead between 4 and 6 points.

As politicking formally ended Friday night, the two men waged a “virtual debate,” appearing on separate television channels at the same hour.

Rutelli used the time to ask three questions he had prepared for their proposed TV encounters: Why is Berlusconi “fully dependent” on Umberto Bossi, a coalition partner who takes racist stands against immigration? Why does the tycoon offer reforms that would benefit the richest 20% of the population? Why does he propose tax cuts that would undermine the minimum pensions he also promises?

Berlusconi did not reply despite a vigil outside his Rome headquarters by two women with rabbit ears, cottontails and a sign that read: “Why do you flee Rutelli’s questions?”

In recent weeks, the 46-year-old Rutelli also has made an issue of Berlusconi’s legal troubles and potential conflict of interest.

Hounded by prosecutors during his seven months as prime minister in 1994, Berlusconi faces indictments on charges of bribery and false business accounting. There are questions about the origin of his fortune, which today is worth about $12.8 billion and includes Italy’s three main private TV networks.

He has dismissed such concerns by presenting himself as too rich to steal and clever enough to transform his own success into wealth for the whole country. He also promises a conflict-of-interest law in the first 100 days of his term.

Avoiding any mention of Rutelli’s name, the tycoon has dismissed corruption issues raised by foreign media, calling them an attack on Italy’s voters. “They are questioning your judgment,” he told supporters at a recent rally in Milan. “It’s not about my actions. It’s about your judgment.”

Berlusconi debated his rivals when he ran for prime minister in 1994 and 1996. By refusing this time, he has highlighted Rutelli’s relative inexperience, dismissing the former mayor as a “spokesman” for Olive Tree’s real masters--people like Massimo D’Alema, a former prime minister and head of the Democratic Party of the Left, a successor to the Italian Communist Party.

D’Alema, he says, is “an old Bolshevik.” Bossi, the tycoon’s coalition partner, has chimed in by branding the center-left’s Giuliano Amato, the current prime minister, “a Nazi dwarf.”

After a sober campaign, Rutelli lashed back this week, saying Berlusconi “doesn’t possess the necessary stature” to govern. “He gets overexcited, loses control and has mood swings.” Berlusconi’s election, he said, would be “a black day for Italy.”

The extremist tone of the campaign--as if fascists were running against communists--has unsettled Italy’s European partners. They liken Bossi to Joerg Haider, a far-right political leader in Austria, and are alarmed by Berlusconi’s alliance in Sicily with an openly fascist party, the Tricolor Flame.

Bread-and-butter issues have been shoved to the sidelines. Both candidates champion roughly similar plans to cut taxes, neither of which was subjected to the rigors of face-to-face debate.

Berlusconi signed a symbolic “contract” on TV this week, promising to cut taxes, reduce crime, raise pensions, create 1.5 million jobs and build public works. He said he would return to private life if he didn’t fulfill at least four of those promises in five years.

Campaigning in Naples on Friday, Rutelli reminded voters that they had heard such promises before.

“Remember what happened in 1994 when my rival won the election promising a million new jobs?” he asked. “He ended up giving Italy a few thousand extra unemployed and 200 trillion lire [$90 billion] of extra public debt.”

Rutelli should have been able to run on his coalition’s record of the last five years, when Italy met the tough criteria for joining the euro currency zone and saw unemployment decline from 12.3% to 9.9%. But the infighting has undermined the center-left.

The Refounded Communists, a hard-core Marxist offshoot of the Italian Communist Party, is supporting Olive Tree’s candidates for the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies--but not for the Senate, where the center-left has a better chance of blocking a two-house majority for Berlusconi.

Emma Bonino, head of the left-leaning Radical Party that gave Rutelli his start in politics, is also running an independent campaign. She is on a hunger strike to protest what she called insufficient air time on state-controlled TV for her party.