Silvio Berlusconi Forza Italia Romano Prodi The Olive Tree The 2006 Italian general election was held on 9 and 10 April 2006.

Preliminary results showed The Union leading the House of Freedoms in the Chamber of Deputies, with 340 seats to 277, thanks to obtaining a majority bonus (actual votes were distributed 49.81% to 49.74%).

During the election campaign, a political battle began between Romano Prodi, who led the centre-left coalition The Union and had been President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004 and Prime Minister of Italy from 1996 to 1998.

The House of Freedoms was the coalition supporting the incumbent government led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and mainly included the same parties as in the previous general election.

The coalition announced a "three-forwards" system, meaning that the Prime Ministerial candidate will be the political leader, among Casini, Fini and Berlusconi, whose party will win most votes.

One event which caused heavy criticism from the opposition was the support, sought and obtained by Berlusconi, of a number of fascist movements and parties, notably the Social Alternative of Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the former dictator of Italy, and Luca Romagnoli, a holocaust denier.

[citation needed] Supporters of Berlusconi responded to this pointing to the presence in The Union of two communist parties, which had among their candidates anarchist activist Francesco Caruso and a transgender person, Vladimir Luxuria.

However, Prodi contested the deliberation of this Committee, which allowed Berlusconi to also hold a final televised speech after the debates as Prime Minister.

Later on, it turned out that Berlusconi's proposal was not completely agreed upon in the rest of the House of Freedoms, and Prodi, immediately after the debate, noted "about ICI, I want to know what the centre-right mayors think about".

According to the Italian par condicio law, it is forbidden to publish any opinion polling in the 15 days which precede the election (25 March, in this case).

Others claimed that the last week of electoral campaign, dominated by Berlusconi's proposal of cutting ICI and by the media's insistence on the alleged new taxes advocated by The Union, persuaded a large number of Italians, usually uninterested to politics, to cast a vote for the House of Freedoms.

While these spots didn't break the par condicio law, it was broken by some of the journalists (especially Emilio Fede, well known for his political ideas) of the Berlusconi's channels and in March and April 2006, the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni fined twice his privately owned channels for violation of the par condicio law, the biggest fine to date (300,000 €).

One of the main points regarded a tax break for income levels, whereas The Olive Tree policy was essentially to maintain a progressive taxation system.

The opposition blamed Berlusconi for doing the tax break in one of the worst economic periods for the country, with no coverage for the resulting debt, and accused Berlusconi's allies of accepting the tax break in return for better power positions; during the negotiations for the Financial Measure, the National Alliance leader, and, at that date, vice-premier, Gianfranco Fini, was moved to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and UDC leader Marco Follini, who had no ministerial role before that date, was chosen to replace Fini.

A good friend of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, Berlusconi supported the American invasion of Iraq, and, during the Italian EU presidency, suggested to Chairman of the PES Group in the European Parliament Martin Schulz, during a talk, a role of kapo (concentration-camp inmate appointed as supervisor) for a hypothetical movie, claiming he would be "perfect" for the role.

When Berlusconi entered the Strasburg Parliament he was welcomed with posters in various languages addressing him as "Godfather of Europe", explicitly referring to Francis Ford Coppola's cinematic series about the mafia, without respecting his high institutional role as EU Council president.

Several times, before and after his election as prime minister, the weekly worldwide magazine The Economist accused Berlusconi of being essentially "unfit to lead Italy".

For this reason very few Italians abroad made use of this right to vote, unless they lived in cities and towns that bordered to Italy such as in Germany, Switzerland, France and Austria.

Various Italian minorities living abroad (notably in the United States) protested frequently at this lack of political representation especially if they paid taxes on property owned in Italy.

[22] It proposes several changes to the current political system: it reduces the number of MPs from about 950 to 750, it gives more power to the prime minister (no longer called president of the council), there will be no possibility to express a vote of no confidence against the prime minister without indicating his successor (similar to Germany's constructive vote of no confidence); it puts an end to the necessity of a law being approved by both Chambers, attributing a clear competence to each of them; it gives more power to the regions, with several references to devolution, the main programme point of the Northern League, still guaranteeing, according to the new version of article 127, the national interest, which had been cancelled by the previous reform of the left.

Since the centre-left opposition opposed to the new constitutional reform, describing it as "dangerous", "separatist", and "antidemocratic",[23] the first procedural step, that is, the approval by the Chamber of Deputies, was done successfully in October 2004, but with less than two-thirds of the lower-house votes, making possible the confirmative referendum.

During the third polling, former UDC leader Marco Follini announced he would abstain from the final vote, not support anymore the constitutional reform, followed by his party fellow Bruno Tabacci.

[25][26] On November 17, the Senate approved the constitutional reform in its final instance; Northern League leader Umberto Bossi attended the discussion and the voting, returning to the Parliament, even if just as spectator, after his illness.

The national referendum, requested by the centre-left opposition and a number of associations and regions - even by the centre-right ruled Lombardy, has been kept on 25–26 June 2006 and it has been concluded with the refusal of the constitutional reform by 61.32% of voting.

Italy was the only European country in which there is an almost-zero rate of growth in economy, and one of the highest debts in the whole EU, which brought Berlusconi to ask successfully to have the Treaty of Maastricht parameters relaxed.

This led to several critics of the Berlusconi's policy on economy, strictly linked to the work of the Italian Ministry of Economy of Giulio Tremonti, which was forced to resign in 2004 after heavy protests from parties of his own coalition, especially the National Alliance, and returned to his previous cabinet position one year later, following the resignation of Domenico Siniscalco; Tremonti's work for trying to fill the cash deficit was often based on amnesties for infringement of tax and building regulations.

[29] An electoral survey published on 15 September 2005 by the national left newspaper La Repubblica[30] claimed that, with the initial proposal of electoral reform become law, the House of Freedoms would win the next elections 340–290, even if they won only 45% of votes and the opposition coalition The Union won 50% because The Union also includes several small parties with less than 4% of national votes.

The Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had previously been a strong supporter of the plurality-based electoral law; in 1995, talking about his coalition, he defined the plurality principle as "our religion".

[32] A modified version of the first proposal, this time with a 2% threshold for entering parliament and without vote of preference for candidates but still without the support of the opposition, was presented to the Chamber of Deputies.

Although The Union led initial exit polls and was quickly expected to win the election, the gap with House of Freedoms narrowed as the votes were tabulated.