GOTTA LOVE BERLUSCA
Berlusconi launches hate campaign against himself
By Rachel Sanderson
ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's re-election campaign took a novel turn on Thursday when his family publishing house launched a book titled "Berlusconi I Hate You".
Written by the press director of Berlusconi's Forza Italia (Go, Italy!) party, it collects comments, both light-hearted and vicious, made by the left-wing opposition about Italy's billionaire prime minister.
"Berlusconi is like AIDS: if you meet it, you avoid it," left-wing EU lawmaker Antonio di Pietro said in one quote.
Publishing a 250-page book of insults may seem like a campaign gift to the opposition, but the book's author, Luca D'Alessandro, says it is just what Berlusconi needs.
"People can now see there is a very aggressive, unpleasant way of politics being used on other side, which is not our way of doing things," D'Alessandro told Reuters.
"Berlusconi is a great man and a great prime minister."
The opposition believes otherwise.
Oliviero Diliberto, leader of the Italian Communists, said Berlusconi, whom the left have accused of megalomania, had only one equal.
"In history, I believe there is only one precedent to the kind of behaviour shown by Berlusconi: Emperor Nero," he said in 2004 referring to the famously debauched Roman Emperor who, legend says, fiddled while Rome burned.
Berlusconi won a landslide victory in 2001, but is trailing in opinion polls for the next general election due in May 2006.
He often complains of being victimised by the Italian press, hounded by politically motivated magistrates and insulted by his political opponents.
For the left, Italy's richest man, who has direct and indirect control over six of the country's seven television channels, is a "lunatic", "dictator", "megalomaniac", "bandit" and "clown", as well as being "immoral", "vulgar" and "extremist".
"Berlusconi's behaviour is characterised by an aggressiveness, an insolence and an arrogance that is not seen in any other European country," said Piero Fassino, leader of the main opposition party, the Democrats of the Left.
Berlusconi is expected to use his media savvy throughout Italy's long campaign period. In the runup to the 2001 elections he mobilised his TV network and distributed his autobiography.
He also proved he can give as good as he gets.
"I'm sorry for having said communists eat babies," Berlusconi told a conference before the 2001 vote.
"But if you want, I can organise a conference in which I will prove communists have really eaten babies and done even worse things."
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