ROME: Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti sparred with Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday over the need for austerity, as local media reported the economics professor was preparing to take on the colourful billionaire in a looming election campaign.
"We are really only just beginning," Monti said in a speech at a Fiat car factory in southern Italy in which he defended the "bitter medicine" of the budget discipline he has implemented and warned against any attempt to turn back the clock.
"Italy had a high temperature and we could not cure it with a simple aspirin. We needed a bitter medicine that was not easy to digest but that was absolutely necessary to go in deep and completely cure the illness," said the former EU commissioner.
"I think it would be irresponsible to waste all the sacrifices that Italians made," he said in an apparent reference to recent campaign talk from Berlusconi, who has promised to put an end to austerity and abolish a new property tax.
"This could plunge Italians back into a state of nirvana far from reality," Monti said at the event, which announced the launch of two new Fiat models at a plant that has been hit hard by plunging sales.
"What is happening here is not magic but a symbol of a turnaround that is possible also for Italy. That is what I want for this country!"
"Today in Melfi, we are starting an operation that is not for the weak of heart but we know that an Italy that is strong of heart can emerge," he said.
In a radio interview, his predecessor Berlusconi warned Monti against joining the campaign and condemned his economic policies.
"I do not think that it is in Monti's interests to become a small player in politics along with other small players," he said.
Berlusconi, 76, said Monti's policies should be "completely changed", adding: "The politics of austerity leads to recession."
Meanwhile the Senate voted a budget for next year that will now go before the lower house for final approval expected on Friday at around 1800 GMT.
Monti, 69, has said he will resign and open the election campaign as soon as the vote is passed, although he will stay on in a caretaker capacity until elections.
Monti is then to hold a press conference and declare his intentions on Saturday or Sunday.
The most likely date for the vote is February 24.
Media reports said Monti will take part in the campaign as unofficial leader of a centrist coalition that some observers likened to the Christian-Democrats who dominated Italy for decades.
While Monti's name cannot be on the ballot as he is already a senator-for-life, he can still be appointed to a post in government including prime minister.
The centrist agenda will include "historic reforms" and "far deeper liberalisation than we have witnessed so far", the Corriere della Sera daily reported, citing participants in meetings with Monti in recent days.
The current favourite in the opinion polls is centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani, who has promised to continue Monti's reforms adding "jobs and equity".
Berlusconi is preparing for his sixth campaign in two decades in politics despite being convicted of tax fraud this year and being a defendant in a trial for having sex with an underage prostitute that is due to end with a verdict in February.
He is also on trial over the publication in a newspaper owned by his media empire of a wire-tapped conversation between a leftist politician and the head of insurance company Unipol.
The lead prosecutor in the case on Thursday asked for a one-year prison sentence for Berlusconi. That verdict is expected in January.
European Union leaders, Italy's business lobby and the Roman Catholic Church have encouraged Monti to stay in politics, seeing him as the best guarantee of the economic and political stability seen in Italy over the past year.
Monti has launched a far-reaching programme of austerity and reforms that has reassured the financial markets but the cost has been record-high unemployment and an economy still stuck in recession, while the country is laden with over two trillion euros in debt.
Opinion polls indicate Monti's popularity has been falling from a peak of 62 per cent shortly after he came to power down to 33 per cent in a poll by SWG released earlier this month as austerity measures begin to bite.
Monti was installed at the head of a technocratic government by parliament in November 2011 after Berlusconi was forced to step down in a whirl of sex scandals, market panic and infighting among his supporters.
- AFP/fa
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Monti, Berlusconi spar as Italy election campaign looms
