Italy Faces Political Turmoil As Berlusconi Battles to the End

Italy's political future was balanced on a knife-edge last night as one of the most dramatic votes in its history conjured up the threat of political turmoil.

On a day of high drama, exit polls promising a clear victory to the centre-left gave way to incomplete results that, at times, showed Silvio Berlusconi and his rightwing alliance in front. Tensions rose when an alliance of opposition parties appeared to suggest there had been irregularities in the counting of the vote.

Nine hours after polling stations closed, and with more than 80% of the votes counted, right and centre-left were neck and neck in the race for the lower house, the chamber of deputies at 49.8% each. There was uncertainty, too, over the outcome in the senate, despite 90% of the votes having been counted. There, the right was in front by a mere 0.9 percentage points, but because of an idiosyncratic system for allocating seats, it was far from assured of a majority. The result looked as if it would depend on the outcome in Lazio, the region around Rome, and Campania, around Naples. In Lazio, the centre-left had a 175-vote advantage. In Campania, a Marxist-Leninist party could decide the outcome.

Last night's calculations do not include the ballot among Italians living abroad whose votes will decide 12 of the 630 seats in the lower house and six of the 315 elected senators.

Behind the figures reared the spectre of a split parliament, in which each of the two houses is controlled by opposing alliances. Since both chambers have equal powers, that could deadlock legislation, render Italy ungovernable and force the country back to the polls.

Suspicions of vote-rigging only added to fears of turbulence ahead. A statement from the core parties in the centre-left alliance, led by Romano Prodi, demanded to know why the results were coming through so slowly. An electronic vote-counting system had been introduced by the outgoing government in several regions. The new system, which covers 10 million of Italy's 50 million voters, was intended to speed up the declaration of results. "We wonder what this delay is owing to. We want to know from the interior ministry what is happening," the statement said.

The ministry responded with its own statement saying that "the provisional figures are made public as soon as they arrive from the prefectures which in turn receive them from the municipalities".

Neither Mr Berlusconi nor Mr Prodi, the former president of the European commission, had made any comment on the vote by late last night. The prime minister was following the unfolding drama from his private palazzo in the centre of Rome. Mr Prodi was shut up with his closest aides a few streets away.