Projections show Berlusconi heading for 3rd term as Italian premier

Silvio Berlusconi was on the verge of reclaiming power in Italy on Monday, with projections giving his conservative bloc a clear lead following national elections.

RAI state television projected Berlusconi's bloc taking 164 Senate seats, ahead of 139 for center-left leader Walter Veltroni's Democratic Party and allies. The Senate has 315 seats.

Berlusconi's bloc also had a 6-percent lead over Veltroni's in the lower house, according to the projections. Berlusconi is vying for his third stint as premier in the last 14 years.

Italy, with more than 60 Cabinets since World War II, has a history of government instability, and this election was being held three years early because of the premature collapse of Romano Prodi's left-wing government.

In Italy's bicameral system, premiers must have control of both houses to govern and Berlusconi appears to have captured that.

The 71-year-old billionaire media mogul seems to have been helped by the Northern League, a key ally, which has 7 percent in the lower house, according to exit polls.

Giovanni Russo Spena, a lawmaker in the Rainbow Left, a grouping of communist and Green parties, noted that, if confirmed, the result would leave Berlusconi depending on the votes of the Northern League, an ally known for its anti-immigrant and zero-tolerance views on crime.

"This is worrying," Russo Spena told RAI State TV. "It means a racist force would be able to keep in check a Berlusconi government."

A sense of malaise hung over the two days of voting on Sunday and Monday, with Italians pessimistic that the ruling class _ dominated for years by the same key figures _ can offer much chance of change.

Turnout was 4 points behind the last national vote in 2006 _ 80 percent compared with 84 percent, according to preliminary data from the Interior Ministry.

The elections decide 945 parliamentary seats, 630 of those in the lower house.

A discredited election law adopted in 2005 and used in one previous national election has made it harder to achieve a solid majority in the upper house, or Senate, creating volatility.

Whoever wins will face Italy's perpetual dilemma _ improving the economy, the world's seventh largest. It has underperformed the rest of the euro zone for years and the International Monetary Fund forecasts growth of 0.3 percent this year, compared with a 1.4 percent average growth for the 15-country euro area.

Signs of decline abound, from piles of trash in Naples, to a buffalo mozzarella heath scare that has hurt exports and hit one of the country's culinary treasures, to the faltering sale of the state airline Alitalia. Italians increasingly blame the governing class _ not just one political force or another _ for the failure to solve the nation's problems.