Italians face jungle fever in ballot booth

ROME, Apr 10 (Reuters) What do flowers, flames, waving bears, roaring lions, birds in flight, smiling suns, roosters, a raging knight and a three-legged woman have in common? They are all in a jungle of 74 logos of political parties approved by the interior ministry for Italy's general election which began yesterday and ends today afternoon.

Depending on where they are voting Italians will find a dizzying constellation of as many as 28 logos on a single ballot sheet measuring 40 by 22 cm -- about the size of a tabloid newspaper turned on its side.

And, as Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu says on the ministry's website, the ballot sheet this time is one of the ''simplest'' in Italian history.

In the 2001 elections there were 180 logos vying for voters' attention.

Animals, flowers, trees and plants are big this year. Crosses are less prevalent than they have been in the past in Roman Catholic Italy, and only four logos bear the communist hammer and sickle.

Logos of the small parties -- most of them aligned with bigger groups in either the centre-right or centre-left coalition -- are the most creative and entertaining.

The ''Democratic Environmentalists'' employ a waving bear as their poster boy while the Greens use a squinting, smiling sun on top of the words ''for peace''.

The ''Love Italy'' party, which aims to foster national pride, has a heart in the green, red and white national colours printed over a map of the country.

A party known as ''The Other Sicily'' uses the mythical Gorgon, a female head with three legs protruding from it.

The regional party of Italy's other large island, Sardinia, has as its logo four blindfolded Moors -- a symbol dating back some 1,000 years.

The logos of the big parties are decidedly more mundane.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (Go Italy) party simply says ''Berlusconi-President, Forza Italia.'' The Olive Tree, one of the parties of his rival, former European Commission President Romano Prodi, merely has the party name and a drawing of an olive branch.

Italians vote by marking an ''X'' over the symbol of only one party and the vote will go to either the entire centre-left or entire centre-right coalition of which it is a member unless the party is unaligned.

Some party logos leave no doubt about what they stand for.

One non-aligned party is called ''No Euro-Unjust''. It hopes to woo Italians who want to bring back the lira because they say their buying power has been decimated since the single European currency was introduced in 2002.

Another logo just says ''Pensioners''.

Although things may still be less than crystal clear for voters, they are certainly not as spicy as in the past.

Logos in the 1992 election included that of ''The Party of Love'' -- founded by porno queens.

Its platform was to promote ''love parks'' where couples could park their cars without fear, legal brothels run by prostitutes' cooperatives and more sex education in schools.

REUTERS PR PM1413