Media Baron Leads in Italy Premier Race

Conservative media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi held an early lead in his bid for a comeback victory in Italian elections Sunday, more than six years after losing the prime minister’s job during a criminal inquiry into his business empire.

Projections of official returns by the Abacus polling agency gave Berlusconi’s opposition House of Freedoms alliance a majority in the Senate over the center-left Olive Tree coalition that has ruled Italy since 1996 and whose standard-bearer this time was former Rome Mayor Francesco Rutelli.

Berlusconi’s forces were also winning most of the seats in the lower Chamber of Deputies, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls.

The preliminary results showed that many voters were willing to embrace Berlusconi’s promise to modernize Italy--even though he still controls the three largest private television networks and is under investigation for alleged tax fraud and bribery of judges.

If his majorities in both houses hold up today in complete returns, the flashy 64-year-old billionaire will return from disgrace to form the country’s 59th postwar government.

Rutelli’s coalition refused to concede defeat early today. A spokesman, Piero Fassino, said that “there may be a significant difference between exit polls and the real results.”

About 80% of Italy’s voters jammed polling stations, keeping many in Rome, Turin, Naples and Reggio Calabria open up to six hours after their scheduled 10 p.m. closing time. The delays, blamed on a reduction in the number of polling stations, prompted rebellious voters to tear up ballots and flip over tables in some precincts.

Berlusconi, who promised to slash taxes and streamline the bureaucracy, persuaded many voters that he can do for Italy’s sluggish economy--the world’s sixth-largest--what he did for his self-made conglomerate.

While punishing the center-left for infighting that produced three prime ministers during its tenure, voters also dealt a surprising setback to the extreme right-wing Northern League, headed by Umberto Bossi, whose defection brought down Berlusconi’s previous government and who was allied with him again.

Exit polls gave 2% to 4% of the vote to the league, which once advocated northern Italy’s secession from the poorer, needy south; it polled 10% in 1996.

As a result of the league’s poor showing, Berlusconi’s alliance, built around his Forza Italia (Go Italy) party and Gianfranco Fini’s right-wing National Alliance, might be able to control Parliament without help from Bossi, whose rants against immigrants and the European Union have alarmed Italy’s neighbors.

“Even though the results are provisional, they show that we have won and can form a stable government,” said Antonio Martino, Berlusconi’s foreign minister in 1994.

Rutelli, 46, a telegenic career politician, trailed in the polls from the start and was no match for Berlusconi’s charisma and showmanship in one of Italy’s most bitter and personalized campaigns since World War II. The tycoon, widely known as Il Cavaliere (The Knight), belittled the former mayor and refused to debate him.

The media magnate’s return to power would give Italy a new political identity on the world stage. It would bolster a trend toward free-market conservatism in major developed countries, following President Bush’s election and that of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Japan.

But Berlusconi’s legal troubles, wealth and right-wing allies have cast him in an unsavory light in the eyes of many opinion makers across Europe, an increasingly close-knit continent where moderate leftists rule most major countries.

Besides three TV stations, Berlusconi’s holding company, Fininvest, controls Italy’s largest publishing group, a film company, the AC Milan soccer team and interests in banking, insurance, construction and telecommunications. Forbes magazine estimates his personal fortune at $12.8 billion.

As prime minister, he would also have indirect control of state television, which, with his own stations, would reach more than 90% of the country’s TV viewers--a concentration of media power unrivaled in the West.

Berlusconi was on the defensive against corruption and conflict-of- interest charges when his first government collapsed after seven turbulent months.

In three subsequent trials, he was found guilty of tax evasion, illegal payoffs to tax police and illegal donations to a political party. The convictions were overturned on appeal, but three corruption investigations are pending in Italy and one in Spain, where he owns part of a television network.

Italy’s place on the continent was a major theme of the election. Rutelli urged voters not to make a choice that would subject the country to the “mistrust of Europe.”

Berlusconi campaigned against the growing power of the EU and attacked, in particular, an initiative to harmonize European tax rates. Bossi accused “technocrats and pedophiles” at EU’s Brussels headquarters of trying to create a “Soviet Union of the West” that would rule over “360 million sheep.”

Major European newspapers castigated Berlusconi for his murky past, hoping to sway Italian voters against him. Britain’s Economist declared him “unfit to govern.”

One of the first to congratulate the tycoon late Sunday was Joerg Haider, the extreme rightist leader whose entry into the government in Austria last year prompted the EU to impose sanctions on that country for several months.

“Berlusconi’s victory is a good thing for Europe,” Haider told reporters during a visit to the opera in Milan.

Berlusconi never acknowledged that, as prime minister, he would have to make decisions that could affect his business interests. But he promised that he would push through a conflict-of-interest law during his first 100 days in office--one that would allow him to keep his assets, possibly in a blind trust.

Rutelli denounced his rival as the candidate of “the few and the privileged” and hammered on Berlusconi’s alleged tax evasion.

Those appeals failed to impress voters, many of whom engage in tax evasion themselves or at least condone it as a legitimate defense against the greed of a rapacious state.

“Berlusconi is now the biggest tax contributor in Italy,” said Rocco Iacopini, the 54-year-old proprietor of the Merlin the Magician tea shop in Florence. “In the old days, the whole system was corrupt. What was an enterprising man like Berlusconi to do? Of course he made payoffs, but let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Many voters said they cared more about bread-and-butter issues and felt that Berlusconi, as a successful entrepreneur, had more to offer the Italian economy--despite the center-left’s achievement of reducing unemployment and bringing the country into the euro currency zone.

To qualify for the euro, the government raised taxes sharply. Berlusconi pledged to cut taxes across the board.

“He knows how to get things done,” said Iacopini, who cast his ballot for the center-right Sunday after 30 years of voting for the left. “He transmits enthusiasm. He will attack the bureaucracy, which weighs on us like an elephant.”