When the Italian election campaign started in December, centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani was all but assured of winning the contest. But now, three weeks from the February 24-25 vote, doubt is creeping in.
Opinion polls this week showed that the conservative coalition led by former premier Silvio Berlusconi was 5 points behind Bersani's camp, dramatically reducing the 15-point lead that the centre-left had enjoyed in early January.
"We are one step away from victory," Berlusconi was quoted as saying on the website of his People of Freedom party. "The left is afraid. They are losing sight of victory, which they thought was in the bag."
He recalled his first election win in 1994, which stunned his rivals, and the 2006 race, when the centre-left wasted a five-point lead in the polls, won by a whisker but lasted only two years in government. That paved the way for Berlusconi's return to power.
"We must redouble our efforts, because we cannot underestimate his comeback skills," former centre-left leader Massimo D'Alema acknowledged in an interview with Il Mattino newspaper.
Berlusconi, reversing an earlier pledge to withdraw from frontline politics, has launched an all-out campaign peppered with promises to cut taxes, anti-German remarks, threats to leave the euro and nods to former dictator Benito Mussolini.
On Sunday, the media mogul-cum-politician was due to cap his efforts with a "shock" proposal. In case of victory, he has said he would not serve for a fourth time as prime minister, but would rather be appointed economy minister.
Meanwhile, Bersani's Partito Democratico (PD) has been weakened by a scandal at Monte dei Paschi di Siena, a bank that is indirectly controlled by the PD-ruled Siena municipality. The lender is being bailed out amid reports that it engaged in murky financial deals.
The PD has also been rattled by criticism from Mario Monti, the outgoing prime minister and leader of a rival centrist coalition, whom Bersani had rather expected to join ranks with his party in a common fight against Berlusconi.
Support for the centre-left had peaked in December, following a primary election battle between Bersani - a dour former communist turned market liberalizer - and Florence Mayor Matteo Renzi - a youthful crowd-pleaser.
In a vote restricted to centre-left sympathisers, the more centrist Renzi lost, but he is credited as being more popular than Bersani among the electorate at large. So a joint rally was staged Friday to get him to help his former rival.
In a slick 20-minute speech before his home crowd, Renzi ridiculed Berlusconi for trying to gain popularity by buying striker Mario Balotelli for his AC Milan football team, and took Monti to task for breaking a pledge to stay independent by entering the election race.
Bersani spoke for longer, drawing less enthusiastic applause. He said his government's priorities would be "morality" and "jobs," in contrast to Berlusconi's scandal-tainted years in government and to the unemployment crisis that has marked Monti's 14 months in office.
"I'm not happy about people saying that the PD has already won ... we have to fight, and maybe fight with a bit more animosity," Bersani said, in a message perhaps addressed more to himself than to his audience.
Pollsters are divided on whether Berlusconi could really pull off the trick of denying victory to the left. "Difficult but not impossible," Roberto Weber from the SWG institute told Huffington Post Italia. "Pure fantasy," Paolo Natale from Ipsos retorted.
Most pundits predict that the centre-left will secure a slim victory, but without a majority in the upper house of parliament. This would force it into a coalition with Monti, who says he would refuse a ruling pact with Nichi Vendola, Bersani's more leftist ally.
Tensions between hard-left and centrist factions have brought down previous centre-left governments in Italy; Bersani would have his work cut out preventing that from happening again, while at the same securing support for the reforms Italy badly needs.
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