Italy’s far-left alliance of Communists and Greens may not conjure up images of glitz and New York steaks, but leader Fausto Bertinotti has nevertheless picked the Hard Rock Cafe on Rome’s fashionable Via Veneto to wait out the tally of election results on Monday evening.  Conveniently located next to the American Embassy, the Hard Rock promises everything from hickory smoked chicken wings to mac & cheese to help ease the long wait ahead for the leader of the Rainbow Left coalition.

 Other candidates have chosen more traditional venues for the evening: the centre-right’s Silvio Berlusconi will be waiting it out at his villa in Arcore near Milan, while centre-left rival Walter Veltroni will be standing by at his party’s offices in Rome dubbed the “Loft”.

Far-right leader Daniela Santanche says she won’t stray far from her home in Milan, while Northern League leader Umberto Bossi and centrist leader Pier Ferdinando Casini will both be holed up at their respective party headquarters.

With her striking good looks and stiletto heels, Italy’s far-right candidate Daniela Santanche has been turning heads on the campaign trail. But is centre-right candidate Silvio Berlusconi also among her admirers? 

“Berlusconi? He’s obsessed with me. But I won’t give it to him…,” Santanche said during a campaign stop this week.

Berlusconi initially responded by saying he would not get into a debate with someone who comes from a world of “yachts, caviar and champagne.” But he was willing to play ball a day later. 

“Well! If she continues to come on to me….,” the media tycoon told reporters when they prodded him on Santanche’s comments again. 

Santanche and Berlusconi have been trading barbs throughout the election campaign, with the 47-year old businesswoman’s La Destra party expected to steal  votes on the right away from the 71-year old media tycoon looking to return to power for the third time.

Santanche — conscious of the small splash she has made by becoming one of the few women prime minister candidates in Italy – has reserved some of her sharpest rebukes for Berlusconi, urging Italian women not to vote for him and calling his views outdated and sexist.  

“Berlusconi better be careful, because on April 13-14, Italian women will be the ones to cook his goose,” Santanche told Reuters last week.

Non sono solo le foto di Oliviero Toscani a stupire. Talvolta lo sono anche le sue parole e quando, ieri sera a “Niente di personale” su La7, ha dichiarato che - lui, elettore radicale da sempre - non andrà a votare nello studio s’è creato un attimo di silenzio, poi è partito addirittura un applauso. Se qualcuno dice che queste elezioni non entusiasmano, che il dibattito fa sonnecchiare, scoppia l’applauso. A 40 anni dal “tutto è politica” gridato nelle strade dai manifestanti del ‘68, la politica annoia, anche se in scena c’è uno scontro elettorale fuori ordinanza.

Non deve stupire quindi se domenica il numero 2 del Pdl Gianfranco Fini ha licenziato in tronco i vertici siciliani del suo partito dopo essersi trovare a fare un comizio a Palermo in una sala semivuota.
La politica stanca, e il tema sta diventando un ritornello anche sulla stampa. Ha iniziato domenica Avvenire che ha lanciato l’”allarme” di un possibile astensionismo record. Ha proseguito il critico televisivo del Corriere della sera Aldo Grasso che ha parlato dei bassissimi livelli di audience delle Tribune politiche e dei dibattiti politici in tv. Ha proseguito oggi il quotidiano Il Foglio, il cui direttore Giuliano Ferrara è impegnato direttamente in campagna elettorale alla guida di una lista anti-aborto che rischia di sparire addirittura dalle cronache non per censura, ma per disinteresse generale: “Il voto sarà anche utile, ma la campagna elettorale è vuota”, ha titolato.

L’analisi è impietosa: “Trionfa un piattume sonnolento che corrisponde a una carenza progettuale”, si legge nell’articolo. Il tema è tanto diventato centrale nella campagna elettorale che il candidato del Pd Walter Veltroni si è sentito in dovere questa mattina di lanciare un appello contro l’astensione: “Se ti astieni non ti lamentare se le cose non vanno in un certo modo. Le elezioni sono il momento in cui si decide”, ha detto. E ieri, un altro leader del Pd, Pier Luigi Bersani, ha invitato a dare una “scossa” alla campagna elettorale, per uscire dal torpore. Ma sulla campagna elettorale italiana in queste ore è piombata pure la primavera e il torpore, sempre più, domina.

The Italian media thought they coined the term “Veltrusconi” for the possibility of a post-electoral deal between twice prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and his centre-left rival, Walter Veltroni, late last year when they began brief discussions about electoral reform, but the word is reported as appearing as red-painted graffiti on a school in Rome as long ago as July 2007, along with the words: “the two-headed monster”. But even though the word has been bandied about liberally in the media ever since, both candidates for April 13-14’s vote were horrified to see their faces physically merge in a disconcerting photo-montage on the front cover of Newsweek.

“It’s horrible,” Veltroni told reporters in response to the hybrid created by Newsweek for a cover story titled “The Mayor V. The Mogul”. It shows the faces of the permanently tanned 71-year-old media tycoon Berlusconi and his bespectacled, bookish 52-year-old rival blending together to the backdrop of Rome’s Colosseum.

“Veltrusconi? It’s an ugly word with no meaning,” said Berlusconi.

Both candidates have constantly denied speculation in the Italian media and among politicians of a “Grand Coalition”, which would last just as long as it takes to reform electoral laws to create a two-party system, then be followed by yet another general election, though they have both acknowledged the possibility of a dead heat or very close result in the upper house or Senate and left the door open to talks on “institutional reform”.

But, as the Newsweek cover and a cartoon on the front cover of Corriere della Sera on Monday show, such talk just won’t go away.

“I really don’t believe there will be any “Veltrusconi” because I think the people of the centre right will prevail in these elections and will have a large majority which will give them the duty and the honour of governing,” Berlusconi told Corriere della Sera readers in an online video chat. He has maintained a lead in opinion polls of between five and nine percentage points in recent months, but Veltroni hopes for an inverted repeated of the 2006 campaign when centre-left challenger Romano Prodi’s six-point lead was drastically reduced in the last few weeks of campaigning, producing the narrowest election result in modern Italian political history. Prodi won, but his tiny Senate majority of just two seats dogged his entire 20 months in office and eventually caused his downfall in January.

“I think you can govern with one or two votes’ difference,” Veltroni told one television interview on Monday. “That is still a majority, even though the Italian people should know whose fault this situation is,” he said, referring to electoral rules introduced by Berlusconi’s last government, know here as the “porcata” (rubbish being a polite translation) which make it virtually impossible to secure a strong majority in the Senate. There are few opinion polls on the Senate vote, since the majority “prize” there is awarded on a regional rather than national basis, but one in La Repubblica last week suggested Berlusconi would only, in the best of cases, be able to count on a margin of five senators in the upper house which has 315 elected members and seven unelected lifetime members.

Talk of an Italian “Grand Coalition” also came up in the Financial Times where Berlusconi’s estranged Christian Democratic ally, Pier Ferdinando Casini, ruled out any two-way coalition with Berlusconi’s People of Freedom though he did appear open to joining a broader German-style Grand Coalition formed by both Berlusconi and Veltroni in the event of a close finish or hung parliament.