Berlusconi questions ballots ahead of Italian vote

ROME (Reuters) - Silvio Berlusconi, tipped by polls to win Italian general elections in just over a week, challenged the outgoing government on Saturday to overhaul ballots he said could confuse voters and jeopardize the vote.

But Interior Minister Giuliano Amato replied that it was too late to create new ballots, which he said were drawn up in accordance with a decree passed by Berlusconi's last centre-right government, which ended in 2006.

The appeal by Berlusconi is the latest sign that results from Italy's election on April 13-14 will be closely scrutinized by the 71-year-old media mogul and his allies, who have already sounded the alarm about potential irregularities in voting by Italians abroad.

In the 2006 election, which Berlusconi lost by the most narrow margin in modern Italian history, the conservative billionaire also challenged voting irregularities. He warned on Saturday of renewed concern this time, appealing to Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano to intervene.

"The electoral ballots ... do not offer any guarantee that the will of the voters will be respected and more easily can lead to an error," Berlusconi said, pointing to likely confusion when identifying party symbols.

UNCIVIL CAMPAIGN?

Berlusconi is leading in opinion polls, campaigning against a government he blames for pushing Italy's economy to the brink of recession, and for leaving consumers with double-digit annual price hikes for basic foods like pasta and bread.

He accused his rival Walter Veltroni on Saturday of selling false promises of change, saying a future centre-left government with Veltroni in charge would resurrect the same cabinet "that ruined Italy" under outgoing Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

Prodi's centre-left government collapsed in January, forcing elections three years early.

Veltroni, the bespectacled former mayor of Rome who, at 52, is nearly 20 years Berlusconi's junior, accused the conservative politician of running a nasty campaign against him.

"Berlusconi's way of waging an election campaign is absolutely uncivil," Veltroni griped in a television interview.

Veltroni returned on Saturday to campaign in Campania region, where his centre-left party has endured withering criticism for its inability to sort out the basic job of collecting and disposing of trash in regional capital Naples.

Veltroni pressed his message of change and grabbed headlines by pledging to give homekeepers free disability insurance.

"There is so much desire to turn the page among the people, because after 15 years we cannot continue with the hate, the insults, and the heckling," Veltroni said.

A former ally from the hard left, communist candidate for prime minister Fausto Bertinotti, lashed out against Veltroni on Saturday by saying even Berlusconi was more effective at speaking to the working-man.

"Certainly, Veltroni will lose," Bertinotti told newspaper Il Giornale, which is owned by Berlusconi's family.

"He has a strong image but stays on the surface, he doesn't allow people to dream and therefore he doesn't enter into contact, for example, with the working class."

(Additional reporting by Massimiliano Di Giorgio in Rome; Editing by Mary Gabriel)