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Italian author Umberto Eco said Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had driven Italy to ruin during his five years in power, in a vitriolic attack on the leader published Wednesday ahead of April's legislative elections.
If Italy were subjected to five more years of Berlusconi rule, "the decline would be unstoppable and we may never be able to recover," the world-renowned author wrote on the opposition website Liberta e Giustizia (Liberty and Justice).
"We are approaching a dramatic showdown," he wrote, referring to elections on April 9 and 10 that will pit the flamboyant prime minister against a centre-left coalition led by former European Commission president Romano Prodi.
Eco, author of the best-selling novels "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucault's Pendulum", called on Italy's "disappointed left" to vote for Prodi.
"If they let their dissatisfaction prevail, they will be partly at fault for leaving Italy in the hands of someone who will ruin her," he wrote.
"Since 2001 Italy has undergone a disastrous downturn economically, in international prestige and with regard to respecting its own laws and constitution," he said.
Whereas in previous Italian polls officials were elected to govern through democratic institutions, "now it's a matter of saving these institutions," according to Eco.
He warned supporters of the left of a "fatal regression of our democracy" and "the massacre of laws, the division of powers and of the very sense of the State."
"The ship could sink. Now each of us must take his place" in backing Prodi, he wrote.
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AFP 082019 GMT 03 06
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