ITALY: Four weeks away from Italy's general election, centre-left leader Romano Prodi may have been the narrow winner last night of the first of two TV debates with his electoral rival, centre-right prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
In the 1¼-hour-long debate, governed by strict rules based loosely on US presidential election head to heads, Mr Prodi came across as clearer, warmer, less defensive and less polemic than his rival.
After much haggling between the two camps, last night's debate took place against the backdrop of rules which, among other things, limited both men to 2½-minute-long answers and which required a very static studio production with the camera remaining focused exclusively on the speaker and not on his rival's reactions. The questions were formulated and asked by two experienced journalists, one from Turin daily La Stampa and the other from Rome daily Il Messaggero.
Underlining the significance of the time factor was a clock that ticked away in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
In that context, Mr Prodi scored the opening points by scrupulously remaining within the time limit in his opening answers while Mr Berlusconi immediately went over his time allowed. Although the debate's rules had been designed to limit theatrical gestures and polemics of the sort that prompted the prime minister to storm out of the studio during a TV interview last Sunday, both men still managed to hit hard on their opponent's raw nerves.
Mr Berlusconi suggested that such was the intrinsically divided nature of Mr Prodi's centre-left coalition, he would never be able to govern effectively. Mr Prodi argued that in "five years of government you passed only laws that directly interested yourself".
After an initial, complicated exchange of views on taxation levels, the debate touched on obvious electoral issues such as job creation, clandestine immigration, education, foreign policy and the cost of living. Inevitably, however, the debate touched on Mr Berlusconi's alleged conflict of interests between his twin roles of industrial and media tycoon and prime minister. Mr Berlusconi claimed that "on four occasions" when the cabinet was deciding on matters directly related to his own financial empire, he left the room. The fact that four such occasions happened at all, suggested Mr Prodi, was in itself proof of an unacceptable conflict of interests. The second debate will take place in the final week of the election campaign, prior to the April 9th and 10th vote.