Italy: Election fraud film sells out. ’Killing Democracy’ accuses Berlusconi party of vote rigging

ROME (ANSA) - A controversial docu-film which accuses former premier Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party of election fraud sold out within hours of going on sale in Italian newsstands on Friday. The film, Uccidete la Democrazia! (Killing Democracy!), came out on DVD with left-wing political weekly Diario but all 100,000 copies were immediately snapped up.

Diario said it had printed a further 50,000 copies which would go on sale on Saturday.

"We weren’t expecting such a huge response. We’ve been inundated with requests for the film," it said.

Sales were boosted by the news that Rome prosecutors had opened an investigation into its claims.

Written by Diario editor Enrico Deaglio and journalist Beppe Cremagnani and directed by Ruben H. Oliva, the film recreates the night of April 10 when Italy began counting the votes at the end of its two-day election.

Centre-left chief Romano Prodi squeaked past Berlusconi in the closest election in Italian postwar history, winning a majority of two seats in the Senate and 49.8% in the House compared to the centre right’s 49.73% - a margin of just 25,000 votes out of 38.1 million cast.

Berlusconi afterwards accused the centre left of vote rigging and refused to concede defeat, even when the Supreme Court confirmed Prodi’s win having examined disputed ballots.

Using actors to play Berlusconi and then-interior minister Beppe Pisanu, plus voiceover by a fictional informant, Killing Democracy! claims electoral fraud did take place but suggests it was carried out by Berlusconi’s party using blank ballot slips.

The film’s underlying theory is that the blank slips were converted into votes for Forza Italia using a software programme installed in the system for transmitting data to the Interior Ministry’s central tallying system.

It speculates that the fraud was stopped at the last minute by Pisanu, leaving Prodi with a razor-thin advantage over Berlusconi.

To support his theory, Deaglio focuses on the sharp drop in the number of blank slips in the last election - 1.1% of the total compared to 4.2% in the previous 2001 election.

He also notes that the percentage of blank slips was the same across the country, amounting to 1-2% in all 20 regions.

He argues that some geographical variations would be expected but instead, even in the southern region of Campania around Naples where blank slips totalled 8% in 2001, the tally this year was 1.4%.

Rome prosecutors are beginning their investigation with an examination of blank slip data, comparing Interior Ministry figures with those posted by polling stations.

The controversy led to fresh feuding between the governing coalition and the opposition.

The head of the opposition rightist National Alliance Gianfranco Fini called for a complete recount involving all ballot slips.

But House Speaker Fausto Bertinotti, a hard leftist, said that "the legitimacy of the results is fully guaranteed... I would exclude that the evidence presented could have any influence on the election result".

The film dwells on allegedly anomalous election night events such as Pisanu’s visit to Berlusconi’s residence in the middle of the vote counting; the slow issuing of data by the Interior Ministry; and the way that although Prodi held a clear lead in the exit polls and was quickly expected to win, the gap with Berlusconi narrowed as the votes were tabulated.

It raises doubts about electronic vote counting, introduced for the first time in the 2006 election in four of Italy’s 20 regions, and shows how easy fraud could be perpetrated using such systems.

The film concludes that electronic voting is a major threat to democracy in many Western countries.

Deaglio said on Thursday that he was glad magistrates had opened a probe, accusing the governing coalition of indifference to his allegations.

"We have a corpse in front of us but the impression is that nobody wants an autopsy... Even on the centre left, the attitude seems to be ’drop it’," he said.

Pisanu, meanwhile, said he would sue Deaglio.

"Diario’s statements about alleged electoral fraud are completely unfounded, false and slanderous. One only has to know the least bit about vote counting regulations, ballot data transmission and result announcements to see that," the Forza Italia heavyweight said.

Forza Italia protested earlier this month about the film’s upcoming release, saying its contents were "completely surreal".

Forza Italia’s chief representative on parliament’s electoral committees said that "the kind of fraud depicted by Deaglio would be impossible simply because the Interior Ministry has absolutely no role in the vote counting".

Other opposition members accused Deaglio of making his claims to cover up possible electoral fraud by the centre left.

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