Italian Voters Will Decide Berlusconi's Fate

Polls were opened on Monday all across Italy for a voting which might put an end to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's five-year rule. By the time the first day of balloting ended on Sunday at 10:00 p.m, 66.5% of the population across the 110 provinces already cast their vote.

Polls reopen today at 7am and the partial results are expected within a few hours before 3pm close. For the first time, Italians living abroad have been eligible to vote, so far mailing about 1.1 million votes. Opinion polls, conducted 10 days before the end of campaigning, showed that Prodi, a former prime minister and European Commission president, is leading.

These polls have not yet been for several days, but Prodi led the race since he returned to the Italian politics. He is the only man who has defeated Berlusconi in 1996. The candidate is Italy's richest man and Washington's strongest ally in Europe, promising in 2001, when he won the lead, to cut red tape and taxes.

He owns Italy's three main private TV networks, a soccer team, as well as publishing, advertising, insurance and real estate interests. In this campaign, Berlusconi used offensive language to describe opposition supporters, characterizing Prodi's left-wing partners as communists under Chinese dictator Mao ZeDong boiled babies.

The 69-year-old prime minister made a last minute offer of tax cuts to the 47 million Italians eligible to vote, hoping to win the vote of undecided Italians. The 66-year-old Prodi also promised to cut business taxes and to diminish Italy's national debt. Both of the candidates vowed to pull Italy's troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006.