Excuse me, where is the general election? The question was often on my lips 14 years ago when covering the 1987 Italian general election.
The point about Italian politics in those far-off days was that they had reached a point of sublime absurdity, half-Beckettian and fully Byzantine, and best described as "partocratic".
To the northern European mind, an Italian election in the 1980s hardly seemed like an election at all; more a polite squabble between ruling party factions. There was no door-to-door canvassing by candidates, no television debates, few public meetings, no sign of a campaign programme, no attempt to express concern about the lire in your pocket or unemployment and, heaven forbid, no one dared make an electoral promise. Indeed, had it not been for the splendidly eccentric activities of the Radical Party, which championed the cause of the porn star La Cicciolina, elected as a deputy in 1987, that particular election might well have passed us by unnoticed.
I well recall one Communist Party (PCI) militant enthusiastically telling me he was off to an election rally. Now this, one thought, is the real thing, the cut-and-thrust. I was subsequently to discover that by "election rally" he meant a meeting of the local PCI branch.
There was, of course, an obvious reason for this state of affairs. Italian political life in those days was still deep frozen in the grip of the Cold War.
There was no real contest. We all knew that the Christian Democrats, plus a motley collection of fellow travellers including the Socialists, would win. We all knew, too, that in one way or another, and for reasons both good and bad, the electoral cards had been stacked against the Communist left.
All of that, of course, changed in the early 1990s following the downfall of east-bloc communism, which deprived the Christian Democrats of their raison d'etre. Their demise (and that of the Socialists) coincided with the arrival on the political landscape of the media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi and with electoral reforms which introduced a 75 per cent first-past-the-post vote.
Italy, we thought, is finally on the road to creating a genuine bipolar democracy of alternatives (centre-right v centre-left) in which the electorate's choice can guarantee a change of governing party. The vote suddenly counted.
The days of an "anomalous" Italian democracy in which governments were formed in smoky party back-rooms without reference to the electorate were over.
The advent of the single-seat constituency would institute a new era of accountability undermining the hidden power of the "princes" of Italian politics such as Andreotti, Craxi and Forlani, not to mention the Catholic Church. The era of too many small parties, too few women in politics and too much nepotism was over. Or was it?
Things have indeed changed. For one thing, Mr Berlusconi brought a vital democratic change to Italian life by the manner in which he skilfully used the medium of television. Thanks largely to him, no one can now say that Italians are deprived of a public electoral debate. Politicians are currently at one another's throats on a nightly basis in a variety of televisual debates.
Then we had the first Italian governments to include former communists in their make-up. But even then there was a rub. Five years ago Italians voted for the current European Commission President, Romano Prodi. After 2 1/2 years, and without an electoral consultation, the centre-left threw him out the window, all in perfect Christian Democrat style.
Then, too, looking at the list of candidates for next month's election, what do we find? Answer: more than 40 parties, candidates imposed on constituencies where they have never previously put a foot, fewer women than in 1996 and the sons of Bettino Craxi, Francesco Cossiga and Armando Forlani all in the running. What is more, political leaders from all sides have been keen to consult the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, while one of the guiding lights of the centre European Democracy party is none other than life Senator Giulio Andreotti. Meanwhile, my old PCI friend is still confusing branch meetings with election rallies. pagnew@irish-times.ie