In Italian Debate, Lights, Camera but Little Action

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, center, after the debate with challeger Romano Prodi. They will square off once more before April 10-11 elections. (By Alessandro Bianchi -- Reuters)

ROME, March 14 -- Under the glare of TV studio lights, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sparred Tuesday night with opposition leader Romano Prodi, bringing the hotly contested campaign for next month's parliamentary elections into homes all over Italy.

Focusing on such subjects as national debt, education reform, taxes and the euro common currency, neither man appeared the decisive victor in a televised debate that was largely civil. Some early opinion polls found that, by a narrow margin, those questioned considered Prodi the winner.

In office since 2001, Berlusconi heads a coalition that is trailing Prodi's camp in the final weeks before the April 10-11 vote. The flamboyant prime minister has been a close ally of the United States in Iraq. At home, he faces criticism for committing troops to a war that is widely unpopular.

The opposition, led by Prodi, a former prime minister and president of the European Union's executive commission, contends that Berlusconi has allowed the economy to stagnate and has focused on passing legislation that benefits his family's huge Mediaset conglomerate.

"In these five years, with a 120-seat parliamentary majority, what have you done?" Prodi said. "Approved laws that only concerned yourself?"

Berlusconi, reeling off figures and statistics, asserted that his government had made firm progress in dealing with Italy's economic and social problems. He accused the previous government of having passed along a deep deficit in 2001 and called Prodi a moderate "front man" for more radical elements of the coalition that includes Catholic groups and the Communist Party.

Prodi called for an end to sharp divisions within the country. What will get Italy back on its feet, he said, is "a sense of justice and equality . . . and solidarity."

Franco Pavoncello, president of John Cabot University in Rome, said he didn't think the debate would sway many voters.

He said that Prodi had a slight edge on Berlusconi because the prime minister seemed "tired of his own arguments" but that Prodi was unconvincing when he emphasized reducing tax evasion as a way of replenishing Italy's national coffers.

"Neither one spoke much about what they are going to do because we have a very strong society and a very weak political system in Italy, and nothing will change until people really want it," Pavoncello said.

Most recent opinion polls show Prodi's coalition ahead by 3.5 to 5 percentage points. But a survey published in the Milan daily newspaper Corriere della Sera on Tuesday showed that 24 percent of voters remain undecided about whom to vote for or whether to vote at all. Both candidates are trying to woo this segment in an otherwise polarized political landscape.

Italians had eagerly awaited the debate, which was in doubt until last week because first one and then the other candidate declared he was unwilling to take part unless certain conditions were met.

The parameters -- including the length of time for questions and answers, camera angles and lighting -- were negotiated in detail up to the last minute. Prodi, who has a somewhat rigid and professorial style, had insisted on American-style rules of debate. The freewheeling Berlusconi criticized that as worthy of a "wax museum" but eventually agreed.

Before the campaign officially began last month, triggering strict rules on equal media time for candidates, Berlusconi blitzed the airwaves by appearing nearly every day on radio and TV talk shows. He made headlines for comparing himself, sometimes obliquely, to Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill and Jesus Christ.

He is known popularly as Il Cavaliere or "The Knight," an honorary title in Italy. Prodi, meanwhile, is often referred to by critics as M ortadella , a sausage from his native Bologna, because of his sometimes frumpy appearance and subdued speaking style.

Berlusconi faces the elections as magistrates in Milan are asking a judge to bring him to trial on charges of bribery and tax evasion in a case involving the rights to Hollywood productions for his Mediaset company. Berlusconi has denied the charges, which follow a string of accusations that have resulted in acquittal or have been dropped because of the statute of limitations.