ROME: Italians voted on Sunday in one of the country’s most uncertain elections ever, marked by a far-right and populist surge, anti-immigration tub-thumping and a leading role for comeback king Silvio Berlusconi.

The last polls carried out in mid-February suggested that a right-wing coalition led by Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia (Go Italy) party will pick up the most votes — roughly 37 per cent.

The 81-year-old media mogul’s four-party group is bolstered by two resurgent far-right forces — the League and Brothers of Italy — which have capitalised on fears over the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have arrived by boat from Libya since 2013.

Immigration was thrust into heart of the election campaign by the brutal killing of a teenaged recovering drug addict blamed on Nigerian immigrants.

The killing prompted a racist “revenge” gun rampage by committed fascist Luca Traini, who shot and wounded six Africans.

The right have promised to expel “600,000 illegals”, with League leader Matteo Salvini, whose campaign slogans include “Italians first”, repeatedly referring to “out of control immigration”.

The surge in right-wing and populist parties has drawn comparisons to Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the rise of US President Donald Trump.

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon — the man who helped Trump ride a populist wave to power — told the Italian press that a hook-up between the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the anti-immigration League was “the ultimate dream”.

“The Italian people have gone farther, in a shorter period of time, than the British did for Brexit and the Americans did for Trump,” said Bannon, who was in Rome on Sunday.

Berlusconi, a three-time prime minister, has returned to the limelight despite a political career overshadowed by sex scandals and legal woes.

Barred from holding office because of a tax fraud conviction, he has put forward European Parliament President Antonio Tajani as his prime ministerial nominee.

The billionaire tycoon was ambushed as he cast his vote in Milan by a topless woman from the Femen activist group who had “Berlusconi, you have expired” scrawled across her torso.

Berlusconi faces opposition from his ambitious coalition partner Salvini, whose anti-immigration and euro-sceptic rhetoric has fired up the campaign while spooking financial markets.

Salvini has said he should be nominated prime minister if his party comes ahead of Berlusconi’s and their coalition wins a majority. However despite the big gains enjoyed by the far right, polls indicate that the likeliest result is a stalemate between the M5S, Berlusconi’s coalition and the centre-left grouping led by the ruling Democratic Party (PD).

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2018