Tour Leffre

By now, no one should be surprised by the conduct of Silvio Berlusconi as Italy enters the final week of election campaigning. He's compared himself to Jesus and Napoleon, sworn off sex until the votes are in and described the Chinese as baby boilers.

But when he announces, as he did today, that anyone who plans voting for the centre-left opposition is a "coglioni" - a slang word meaning testicle, prick or idiot - his desicion to run his re-election effort like an episode of South Park makes it hard to turn away.

As a previous post suggested, this may be his goal - the more apparent insanity that comes from his lips, the less the Italian media gives airtime or column inches to his opponents.

The opposition leader, the former Italian PM and European commission head Romano Prodi, has decried his outbursts as the "typical strategy of someone who has nothing to lose", while other critics have questioned his mental health. Mr Berlusconi - who presumably rooted against George Clooney in Goodnight and Good Luck - replies that communists have always tried to label their enemies as crazy and lock them away in the madhouse. Some of his supporters also admire his earthy manner.

Still, the "Is Berlusconi mad?" question makes for great television. A Channel 4 News video report from the end of last week gathers together some of the highlights. There is the baby boiler moment ("I never said communists eat people, but it is a fact the Chinese used to boil babies and use them as fertiliser," he says at one meeting), and the moment he tells the head of Italy's employers' association, sitting in the audience and shaking his head at one of his speeches, that if he wants to speak to the head of the government he should address him as "signor". Diego Della Valle, the affronted party, resigned soon afterwards.

Though it is easy to overlook, there is a policy side to this election. On Comment is free, the Italy correspondent John Hooper examines Mr Berlusconi's shock announcement, at the end of a televised debate last week, that he planned to scrap council tax. Hooper terms it "populist nonsense", but says it demonstrated the Italian prime minister's often underestimated political talent. A piece in Newsweek points out that the vote could have a big impact on Italy's future.

While the economy has stagnated under Mr Berlusconi, his administration has been unusually stable by Italian standards. If Mr Prodi chooses to undertake the economic reforms Mr Berlusconi ducked, he may find Italy returns to the "fractured, internecine politics of yore" if the people do not follow.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/04/04/silvio_says_.html