ROME - Insults and gibes are a politician's stock in trade during an election campaign, but nowhere has this been more true than in Italy, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faces off against his challenger Romano Prodi in a poll which opens on Sunday.
"Drunkard!"
Prodi tells Berlusconi during a TV debate on April 3:
"The prime minister clings to figures like a drunkard clings to lampposts, not for illumination, but to keep standing."
"Useful Idiot!"
Berlusconi's retort to Prodi during the same debate:
"Prodi is like a useful idiot. He lends his cheery parish priest face to the left, which is 70 percent comprised of former communists."
"Dickheads!"
The campaign's most infamous quote, Berlusconi on left-wing voters, to a conference of small business-owners:
"I trust the intelligence of the Italian people too much to believe there are so many dickheads around who would vote agaisnt their own best interests."
"Faggot!"
Neo-fascist leader Alessandra Mussolini's comment to trans-gender communist candidate Vladimir Luxuria during a TV debate:
"Better to be a fascist than a faggot."
"Undertaker!"
Berlusconi again on Piero Fassino, the gaunt-faced leader of the largest left-wing party, Democrats of the Left:
"Fassino is very sought after by the lobby of undertakers, who want him as their main promoter."
04/09/2006 01:34 GMT