ROME: Electoral races in Italy are not known for sophisticated debate and polite exchanges between candidates, but the virulence of this year’s campaign from the start has dismayed even the most seasoned observers.

With the vote still three months away, the past week has seen a crescendo of threats, insults and recriminations as both Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the opposition ignored pleas to tone down their rhetoric by the head of state.

“We are already facing a duel to the death that doesn’t do any good not just to our country’s image, but to its democracy,” Enzo Biagi, a respected political commentator, wrote at the weekend in Corriere della Sera newspaper.

“So far, nobody has quite understood what the two blocs intend to propose to Italians to get their votes, and above all to pull the country out of economic crisis,” he said.

Electoral issues have been drowned out by the noise of vitriolic attacks.

An increasing number of Italians are struggling to make ends meet as the economy stagnates, but all they hear about from their politicians are ructions over an arcane bank takeover scandal that seems remote from their daily concerns.

“People’s lives have disappeared from the electoral campaign,” said a recent editorial in la Repubblica daily.

“In this mishmash of probes, suspicions and mutual accusations, there is no time or willingness to consider the problems of citizens who have to send their children to school and get to the end of the month,” it said.

The mud started flying when a newspaper owned by Berlusconi’s brother printed phone transcripts showing the head of the main opposition party, Piero Fassino, in close contact with a key player in the banking controversy.

Berlusconi, who is trailing the opposition in the opinion polls, leapt on the wiretaps to accuse centre-left leaders of abusing their political power to interfere in Italian business life — a charge he himself has regularly faced.

The centre-left has denied the assertion and has threatened to sue Berlusconi if he continues with his daily attacks.

“Against me Berlusconi is using the Nazi propaganda tactics of Goebbels: slander, slander and some of it will stick,” said Fassino, referring to Adolf Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels.

Even some of Berlusconi’s allies say he went too far last week when he decided to volunteer information to prosecutors about the left’s alleged attempts to influence a takeover bid for a major Rome-based bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL).

“We don’t like this climate,” Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione said on Monday. “We want an electoral campaign based on programmes, not on fights, insults and excesses.”

The bid for BNL by insurer Unipol has come under scrutiny as part of a larger investigation into financial scandals that has already claimed the heads of several financial executives and forced the resignation of Bank of Italy governor Antonio Fazio.—Reuters