After five years, are Italians so tired of Silvio Berlusconi that they will toss him out?

Many political analysts say the election being held Sunday and Monday will essentially be a verdict on the prime minister, who has swaggered across the stage but left the economy limping.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reacts during the final electoral rally of the center right coalition in Naples, Italy April 7, 2006. Italy will go to a national vote on April 9-10. [Reuters]

But his challenger at the top of a center-left coalition, Romano Prodi, has also failed to inspire great confidence, these analysts say, amid doubts that his multiparty coalition will be able to stick together long enough to improve Italy's lagging economy. However they vote, Italians do not seem to be mustering hope of real improvement in Italian life.

"There's the real perception that Italians despair of having a future," said Lucio Caracciolo, editor in chief of Limes, a political review whose most recent issue, published Friday, focused on the country's bleak self-perception.

"There is the sensation that our destiny is slipping from our grasp and there is little we can do to change it," he said. "If this is the depressed mood of the country, then its prospects aren't encouraging."

There were large elections rallies on the last day of campaigning Friday, and last-gasp pleas and promises to a disheartened electorate that is being asked to choose between two diffuse coalitions, each composed of parties that do not fully agree on political programs and policies.

Speaking in Naples, Berlusconi, who was flanked by his chief allies, played the tax card: "Do you want to leave the future of your children in the hands of those who want to put odious taxes on your homes, your savings and what you want to leave your children?" he asked, referring to his opponents as having "Lenin, Stalin,

Mao and Pol Pot as idols." He exhorted his supporters to vote and "choose to not go backwards, to move forward for freedom."

In Rome, Prodi, said his center-left coalition offered only one promise: "to win the elections and govern for the good of Italy." A vote for his camp, whose leaders were present on the stage set up in the Piazza del Popolo, he said, would be "a call for the reconstruction of the country."

When the last official polls were published two weeks ago, Prodi held the lead by a slight margin. Since then, in a rancourous end to the campaign, both leaders have scrambled to lure undecided votes.

In a dizzying display of bravado, Berlusconi has used the waning days of the campaign for a whirlwind succession of dramatic revelations (judicial plots against him, thwarted terrorist attacks) and made a rapid succession of electoral promises (tax cuts on bank current accounts, abolition of a municipal real estate tax, higher pensions).

A front-page editorial Friday in Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading paper, openly questioned where the center- right thought it would find the money to finance its entire electoral program, estimated to cost between ?6 billion, or $44 billion, and ?01 billion a year.

Prodi, a one-time prime minister and former president of the European Commission, has taken a more low-key line of attack, campaigning to restore unity in a country deeply divided over his colorful rival.

Prodi has promised to cut the costs of labor for businesses by 5 percent, but he has had to defend the center left against charges that it intends to raise old taxes and introduce new ones to finance Italy's recovery.

But Prodi's coalition spans the center to far left and many Italians doubt it would be able to govern effectively.

"If they win with a small margin, it will be difficult to pass the tough laws that are necessary to push through real reforms and fix the disasters that the Berlusconi government passed," said Grazia Di Franco, an interior decorator in Rome, who supports the center left.

An electoral law passed by the center-right majority last year reintroduced a proportional system that favors individual parties.

That means that no matter who wins, victory is unlikely to come with a substantial majority, meaning that the winner could be unable to rule with a firm hand.

If the new government is forced to tread lightly to stay in power and has to satisfy a diverse coalition, it will be all the harder to act decisively on Italy's bleak economic outlook - near zero growth, declining competitiveness against low-cost manufacturers like China and growing public debt.

Pollsters disagree about the number of undecided voters. Polls have estimated them at 15 percent.

"In the end, the undecided are almost evenly split between the left and the right," said Piergiorgio Corbetta, a director of research at the Istituto Cattaneo, a research group in Bologna.

Both sides have been appealing to Roman Catholics, who make up the lion's share of the country's 50 million voters. But they, too, are divided.

Aurelio Mottola, editor of a Catholic publishing house, said, "Some Catholic ideals, like the notion of social justice, is very much present in some parties of the center-left coalition." But "the parties of the right support family values, and are hostile to proposals like same-sex unions."