ROME (AFP) — Italy's Silvio Berlusconi said Friday he would unite with his main ally under a single right-wing party to contest April elections, imitating his left-wing rival in a bid to avoid the shaky coalitions that have weakened previous governments.
Berlusconi, the centre-right leader and former prime minister, will run under the banner of the People's Party for Freedoms (PDL), the new party he announced in November to replace his Forza Italia formation.
And it will expand for the elections to include the right-wing National Alliance and will form a federation with the populist Northern League, he said on Canale 5 television.
Berlusconi, 71, said the PDL -- which his political allies rejected as an umbrella party for the right when it was created -- will bring together "all Italian citizens, liberal and moderate, who do not identify with the left".
The new list "will not carry the Forza Italia symbol, nor that of the National Alliance," he said. "It will be one parliamentary group."
"I share Berlusconi's proposal to give a single voice in parliament for freedom-loving peoples," National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini said following a meeting with Berlusconi.
In April 2006 elections, the right formed a coalition grouping Forza Italia, National Alliance, the UDC centrists and the Northern League.
Berlusconi said he hoped the UDC would join the new party this time around, but he was likely to run into opposition from its leader, Pier Ferdinando Casini. A party spokesman said the UDC wanted to keep its "independence."
President Giorgio Napolitano dissolved parliament Wednesday to prepare for April's snap elections, saying he did so with "regret".
He had hoped an interim government could be set up to reform an electoral law blamed for the political instability that brought down the government of centre-left leader Romano Prodi after only 20 months in power.
Set for April 13-14, the elections will be held just two years after Prodi defeated media tycoon Berlusconi in the closest election in modern Italian history. Opinion polls suggest the latter is likely to return to power.
Earlier, Berlusconi's main opponent, Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, announced his newly formed Democratic Party would stand alone in the election, without forming the sort of unwieldy coalition that collapsed last month.
"It's not a divorce but a separation by mutual consensus. Centre-right and centre-left coalitions no longer work," Democratic Party spokesman Dario Franceschini said, following a meeting among leftist parties.
But Berlusconi argued that Veltroni had chosen his go-it-alone strategy "to escape the deadly grip of the extreme left".
Following the fall of Prodi's government, both right and left said they wanted to end the political coalitions that have marked Italian politics in recent years, in a bid to make the country more governable.
"It's going to change many things for the small groupings that will now have to fight for their survival," said French political analyst Mark Lazar, who specialises in Italian politics.
He said the move also clarifies the political landscape, "a calculation that corresponds to the aspirations of the electorate".
Lazar judged Berlusconi's plan for a single party "well played, even if he takes a calculated risk that will lose him votes", despite his poll lead.
Berlusconi has the distinction of having headed the only government since World War II that lasted through a full five-year term, from 2001 to 2006.
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