Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday disputed opposition chief Romano Prodi's claim to have won the Italian election. Breaking the silence he has maintained since the vote closed on Monday afternoon, the centre-right premier said at a press conference that "we won't hesitate to recognise the outcome of the vote as soon as there is definitive judicial clarification.
"Until that day, no-one can say they have won."
"The electoral results cannot be considered absolutely definitive," the 69-year-old billionaire media magnate added. Earlier in the day, Prodi claimed victory in the Sunday/Monday vote after the tally showed his coalition had squeaked past the centre right.
In the House, the centre left won 49.8% compared to the centre right's 49.73%, a margin of just some 25,000 votes. The centre right initially appeared to have won the Senate but the addition this morning of results from the votes cast by Italians resident abroad swung the chamber marginally in Prodi's favour, leading the former European Commission chief to declare victory.
But the centre right is demanding checks on spoilt and disputed voting slips and even a possible recount. The number of disputed slips for the Senate is 39,822 while the number for the House is 43,028, according to Interior Ministry figures.
Berlusconi said at the press conference that the ballot slip data showed "many, too many dark sides".
He refused to give details but said the votes from Italians living abroad in particular showed "many irregularities".
"It cannot therefore be excluded that this vote will be declared void," he said. He said that if the result was a hung parliament, with the centre left dominating the House and the centre right the Senate, then "perhaps we should consider joining forces and
governing together".
"We have to reason in terms of unity," he said, airing the possibility of a German-style broad-based coalition. Berlusconi implied that it would be "absolutely irresponsible" of Prodi's Union coalition to insist on its victory.
"Given that the country is truly divided 50%, we expect the leader of the Union to act responsibly," he said. Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said that it would only take a "few days" to check the disputed ballot slips.
"The centre right was not politically defeated in these elections and mathematically we now have to wait and see," said Fini, who heads the rightist National Alliance (AN). The opposition issued a statement in response saying that "it is serious to insinuate that the election outcome has been falsified, altered or manipulated and reveals the will to subvert the real order of the facts, namely the indisputable victory of the centre left".
"Falsifying reality is an art that the outgoing government of Silvio Berlusconi has always applied. The press conference organised by the centre right parties this afternoon once again undermines the institution of government and reduces it to a tool of political propaganda," it said.
In the last few heated days before the vote, Berlusconi Berlusconi launched electoral fraud accusations at the opposition saying international monitors were required. Responding to a journalist's question whether United Nations observers should be brought in to oversee the voting, Berlusconi said that "they must come to defend us from these gentlemen (the opposition) who are experts in fraud".
"What with all the dailies on their side and all the TV stations behaving as we can see, we do indeed need fraud observers. If things carry on like this, who knows what they'll get up to," added the media magnate, who owns three nationwide television channels.
