Enlarge imageBy Phil Stewart
ROME (Reuters) - The granddaughter of Italian wartime dictator Benito Mussolini has gone on hunger strike after being barred from next month’s regional elections over signature forgeries.
Alessandra Mussolini, founder of the far-right Social Alternative movement, is appealing the ban in a Rome court.
More than 800 signatures on her petition to stand in the election for president of Lazio region have been declared false. The list allegedly includes names of the dead and others whose existence was dubious, such as people who gave their birth date as February 31.
Mussolini abandoned the right-wing National Alliance party after its leader, and current foreign minister, Gianfranco Fini paid a visit to Israel and publicly condemned her grandfather. Fini’s gesture symbolically cut the party’s ties to fascism.
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Mussolini, a former aspiring actress and model who defends her grandfather, accused the sitting president of the Lazio region, Francesco Storace of the National Alliance, of engineering the forgery scandal.
To draw attention to her case, Mussolini stopped eating, although she admitted she was unprepared for the ordeal which lay ahead.
"I had stomach pain yesterday, so I didn’t really eat enough beforehand," she told Reuters on Monday. "I’m anxious, nervous over this scandal."
Mussolini said she would stay on hunger strike until a decision is made on her appeal, expected later this week.
"SHE’S OUT"
Storace shrugged off accusations that he was behind her disqualification. "Who’s she against on this hunger-strike? Those who figured out the tricks and irregularities," Storace said in an interview with left-leaning newspaper la Repubblica.
"She has to get in her head that she’s out. Not because of me, but because of her supporters who bend the rules."
Opinion polls published last week showed that Mussolini could draw 6 percent of the vote, splitting the right-wing electorate and handing victory to centre-left TV journalist Antonio Marrazzo.
"This is scandalous ... If other politicians are excluded like this in the future, you can imagine what could happen -- a coup," Mussolini said.
With the fakes disqualified, Mussolini did not have the necessary 3,500 signatures to stand in the April 3-4 vote. Among those on the list was famous Italian actress Ornella Muti, but she denied signing the petition.
But Mussolini cried foul. "The signatures are good. They’re like those from all the other parties. I’ve seen the others. They’re all faked, false, strange, incomplete," she said.
"Now, why do they keep going after our lists and not the others?"
