MILAN: To hear the campaign rhetoric, Italy hangs on the edge of an abyss. An enraged Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says his rivals have fomented street violence that threatens democracy.

A communist ally of opposition leader Romano Prodi says the centre-right’s hands are “dripping with blood”.

Italy, according to a US State Department warning ahead of the April 9-10 vote, is under “public threat”.

“Alarm, hysteria, the sense of a final, catastrophic showdown that terrorises whoever ends up losing — these are the predominant feelings,” Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, said in an editorial entitled “Electoral Apocalypse”. Italians enjoying the first buds of spring could be forgiven for scratching their heads over talk of creeping civil war.

There has been less than a handful of election-related street skirmishes, and campaigning has gone ahead uninterrupted.

Since the 1994 collapse of the Christian Democrat (DC) party which ruled for half a century, the constitution has survived communists in government and two stints in power for Berlusconi, whose media empire has also endured.

Yet appeals by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi to tone down the shrill language have fallen on deaf ears. Each side has continued to predict the demise of democracy if it loses.

“Political passions have become as irrational as those of football fans,” humorist Beppe Severgnini wrote.

Why, then, the doomsday predictions by Italy’s elite? Part history, part politics and part personalities, analysts say.

The disintegration of the DC party under the weight of corruption scandals cleared the way for a bipolar political system.

That is the rule in many democracies but not so in Italy which during the Cold War trod a middle path between the fascist legacy of dictator Benito Mussolini and the anti-capitalist ideals of Western Europe’s biggest communist party.

“The Christian Democrats acted as mediators. Now there are no mediators,” said Anna Bull, a University of Bath professor.

The discrediting of the Christian Democrats has made it hard for either bloc to shift decisively to the centre.

And while the political elites after World War Two sought to bridge divisions between neo-fascists and communists, today the same elites are at daggers drawn.

“Deeply set ideological divisions continue,” said Bull. “Each side sees the other as the enemy.”

Sergio Romano, a commentator and former ambassador, said for decades the dominance of the Christian Democrats and Italy’s proportional voting system muffled the clash of personalities.

While Italy is now comfortable with alternating majorities, many commentators say its democratic institutions lag.

“What Italy really lacks is neutral, impartial institutions that can moderate the tone,” Pasquino said.

“It’s not that Italy’s democracy is endangered,” he said. “It’s the quality of democracy that is not good enough.”—Reuters