With elections set for April 13-14, the two top candidates to become the next Italian premier are Democratic Party Walter Veltroni and Forza Italia leader Silvio Berlusconi.
Here are their profiles: WALTER VELTRONI.
At 52, the bespectacled mayor of Rome is one of the younger figures on the Italian political scene and this is partly why he has emerged as the centre left's best hope in the coming polls.
After governing the capital for six years, he was last year given the job of leading the new Democratic Party, the largest force on the centre left. He is set to give up his mayor's job in coming weeks.
Veltroni is expected to play on his relative freshness in the tussle against Berlusconi and has boosted his image as an innovator by taking the unprecedented step of announcing that the Democratic Party will run alone.
He has also tried to highlight his modernity and international credentials by adopting 'Yes We Can' - Barack Obama's slogan in US primaries - as his own battle-cry.
A published author and recognised movie buff, in 2006 he created an annual Rome film festival which now rivals the much older one in Venice. One of his published books is a profile of his political idol Robert Kennedy.
He edited L'Unita - the Italian Communist Party organ - during the early 1990s and in 1996 became deputy premier and culture minister in Romano Prodi's first government. Afterwards he spent three years leading the PDS, the left-wing party that the Italian Communist Party had by then evolved into.
As Democratic Party leader, Veltroni led a recent bid to forge a bipartisan accord on institutional reforms, in particular the electoral law. His efforts failed, although at one point he and Berlusconi appeared to be on a similar wavelength.
Often-cited trivia about Veltroni include his support for the Juventus soccer club and his voiceovers for a turkey character in the 2005 Disney Film Chicken Little.
SILVIO BERLUSCONI.
The Forza Italia leader, who is Italy's richest man, has already been Italian premier twice (for seven months in 1994 and from 2001 to 2006). The coming elections will see him standing for the fifth time.
Now 71, the charismatic media tycoon had been expected to bow out of politics in the next few years but the early collapse of Prodi's government has thrust him back into the fray.
He seems set to lead the same four-party centre-right grouping to the polls in April, despite ructions a few months ago when he announced his Forza Italia party was being reshaped as a new, wider People's Liberty Party.
That project, apparently a bid to establish definitive control over his traditional allies, has slipped into the background ever since elections began to look inevitable.
Always controversial, Berlusconi's political career has been dogged by debate about conflicts of interest. As owner of Mediaset, Italy's three-network private TV group, critics say he simply should not be in government.
The permanently tanned Berlusconi, who had a hair transplant and a facelift during his last bout as premier, is also president of AC Milan, the current European champions.
He has faced a series of corruption probes and trials but has never been definitively convicted. He has always maintained that a left-wing judiciary has set out to sabotage his political career.
Despite being an out-and-out anti-Communist, he has shown more respect for Veltroni than for Prodi and other centre-left leaders. He has said he will cooperate with the centre left on reforms after elections.
