Beelzebub of Italian Politics Holds Key to Prodi's Future

Silvio Berlusconi's hopes of grabbing back power will tonight be laid on the hunched shoulders of an 87-year-old politician who until a few years ago was battling charges of murder and mafia involvement.

Giulio Andreotti, whose alleged involvement in a string of shadowy conspiracies earned him the nickname Beelzebub, will today attempt to scotch the centre-left's plans to form a government with the razor-thin majority it won in this month's general election. Discreetly supported by the outgoing government, Mr Andreotti is running for the speakership of the senate in a ballot that will be the first big test of the centre-left's ability to govern.

If he wins, it will plunge Italy into political chaos, forcing a new election or the left-right coalition government that Mr Berlusconi has demanded. More than two weeks after the vote, Italy's prime minister and richest citizen has not conceded defeat and continues to claim the ballot was rigged by the opposition. His successor is expected to be named by Italy's next president. But parliament is not due to choose a new head of state until mid-May.

The two houses of the Rome parliament have equal powers. So an Italian government must have a majority in both chambers. In the upper house, only 158 of the 315 elected senators won their seats as representatives of the centre-left Union, led by the former EU commission president Romano Prodi.

In addition, there are seven life senators. One is Mr Andreotti. Most of the others are expected to vote for the centre-left's candidate for the speakership, a former trade unionist, Franco Marini. But the ballot is secret and the centre-right is hoping Mr Andreotti, a former Christian Democrat, can lure some of the Union's senators to his cause. Several were Christian Democrats who revere Mr Andreotti, despite his dubious past.

"Eternal Giulio", as he is known, was the prime minister of seven governments and at other times held all the top ministerial portfolios. He is famed for his cynical wit and, in particular, the remark that "power wears out those who do not have it". Mr Andreotti's last government fell apart in 1992 as the Christian Democrat party and Italy's entire political system began to collapse in a welter of sleaze. He was later put on trial, accused of ordering the murder of a journalist who had threatened to publish details of his alleged involvement with the Sicilian mafia.

Mr Andreotti was given a 24-year jail sentence for the killing, but his conviction was overturned on appeal. In 2004, however, Italy's top appeals court upheld a verdict according to which, until 1980, the former prime minister had "consciously and deliberately cultivated a stable relationship" with cosa nostra's top godfathers. A lower court had found Mr Andreotti guilty of criminal conspiracy because of his mafia links, but he was never convicted because the offence was "timed out" by a statute of limitations. Charges relating to the period after 1980 were dismissed because of lack of evidence.

In the lower house, where the centre-left has a comfortable majority, the speakership was expected to go to Fausto Bertinotti, the leader of the most radical party in Mr Prodi's coalition, Communist Refoundation.