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An atheist ex-Communist journalist who writes novels, loves movies and played the voice of a turkey in an animated film could become the next prime minister of Italy.

Add audacious gambler to the list, for Walter Veltroni seems intent on making his effort more difficult than it needs to be as he prepares to battle Silvio Berlusconi, the TV mogul who has had two stints as prime minister and cherishes a third.

Mr. Veltroni insists on running only as the leader of the newly formed Partito Democratico, the Democratic Party, not as the eventual leader of a centre-left coalition in an unruly political system that has always demanded coalitions.

Rival political leaders have called Mr. Veltroni's go-it-alone strategy "suicidal," a gift to Mr. Berlusconi and his audacious comeback bid. But Mr. Veltroni, whose day job is as mayor of Rome, has always been something of a maverick.

The PD and its rivals on the left and right leaped into election mode yesterday after the Italian President dissolved parliament. The election is set for April 13 and 14.

Italy's 61st government since the Second World War fell on Jan. 24, when Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition lost a confidence vote, capping a week of political turmoil that started when a corruption investigation cost him his justice minister.

While the latest polls put Mr. Berlusconi, 71, and the centre-right parties in the lead, Italy's political observers say Mr. Veltroni, 53, has a fair chance of coming out on top in spite of his refusal (so far) to cobble together an alliance with the dozens of parties on the left, any of which is capable of destabilizing a government.

"He can be very competitive with Berlusconi," Stefano Manichini, the editor of Italy's L'Europa newspaper, said in an interview.

"Veltroni understands the popular culture. He speaks directly and easily about everyday common life and he's a lot younger."

Mr. Veltroni seems happy to play the underdog. "The Giants won in the end, so can we," he said in Florence, referring to the New York Giants' upset Super Bowl win on Sunday.

Mr. Veltroni is not your standard politician. In a country of Catholics, he is an atheist. In a soccer-mad city whose fans are split between the AS Roma and Lazio teams, he is a fan of Juventus, the Turin club. His heroes are Robert F. Kennedy (about whom he wrote a book) and Barack Obama.

"I think he's a very hard-working and honest administrator," said Franco Pavoncello, the political analyst and president of Rome's John Cabot University. "Even though he was a Communist, his ideals are more Bob Kennedy than Karl Marx."

Mr. Veltroni was born in Rome, the son of an Italian state TV manager and a Slovenian mother. As a teenager, he joined the Italian Youth Communist Federation and was elected a Rome city councillor in 1976 as a member of the Communist Party. A few years later he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, the government's lower house.

For the first half of the 1990s, he was editor of L'Unità, the Rome daily newspaper whose fortunes rose and fell with those of the once-powerful Italian Communist Party. Today the much diminished paper supports Mr. Veltroni and the PD, formed recently by the fusion of two centre-left parties.

For two years starting in 1996, he was minister of culture and deputy prime minister in Mr. Prodi's first government. In 2001, he became mayor of Rome and won a landslide re-election in 2006.

His popularity ratings as mayor have always been high. His supporters give him credit for restoring a sense of pride to a city long considered a decaying, strike-prone cultural backwater. He brought La Nuit Blanche, known in Rome as La Notte Bianca, to the city and turned the all-night arts and street festival into one of the best of its kind in Europe.

He seems most proud of launching the Rome Film Fest in 2006. And he has issued a torrent of film licences, allowing Rome to regain its status as a movie-making centre. He played the voice of Turkey Lurkey in the 2005 Italian version of the Disney animated film Chicken Little.

His cultural efforts have not endeared him to all Romans. Some think he has done more for tourists than for the Romans themselves. Indeed, the streets are littered with garbage, and violent crime, all but unknown a few years ago, has become a problem.

Mr. Veltroni's response is that he has improved public transportation and has made education a priority. Under him, Rome has built three new university campuses in an effort to attract 100,000 new students.

He has also campaigned for election reform in an effort to end the excessive, government-breaking power of Italy's small parties. Some 40 political parties were represented in the last parliament and it took just one, with a mere three seats in the senate, to end the show.

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Italy's parliamentary volatility

Here are some questions and answers about what happens next in

Italy's political situation:

Which electoral system will be used?

The same as in 2006, blending proportional representation with "bonus" parliamentary seats awarded to the coalition with the most votes. Almost everyone agrees the system needs changing to give greater stability and reduce the influence of tiny parties, whose bickering brought down Romano Prodi after 20 months in office. But the Prodi resignation crisis derailed talks on electoral reform.

The law could be changed by a referendum, which has been demanded by a petition and approved by the constitutional court, but that referendum cannot be held for at least a year once parliament has been dissolved.

Who are the main contenders?

Silvio Berlusconi, leader of the biggest centre-right party, Forza Italia, has a clear lead in opinion polls. The 71-year-old media tycoon has already been prime minister twice, with the rare distinction in Italy of serving a full five-year term. He lost in 2006 to Mr. Prodi, but left him a "poison pill" electoral law that landed the centre-left with a tiny senate majority.

Mr. Prodi says he will not contest another election, so the centre-left baton passes to Walter Veltroni, 52, mayor of Rome, who takes the newly formed Democratic Party (PD) into battle for the first time.

Reuters News Service