An Italian lawyer is having a whip-round to make it easier for Premier Silvio Berlusconi to carry out a pledge - later retracted - to 'sail to Tahiti' if his re-election bid fails.
Verona lawyer Guariente Guarienti plans to plaster the city with posters on Friday urging citizens to pay for a voyage to the Pacific dream island. Guarienti said the trip would include a two-week stay at the "best hotel in Polynesia," the Tahiti Intercontinental Resort, where he said Berlusconi, a former cruise ship crooner, could entertain himself and others with some of his self-penned ditties.
The lawyer got the idea for his lark from Berlusconi's short-lived September promise, if defeated, to "sail to Tahiti in a fine boat and thank my lucky stars for saving me from responsibilities".
"I believe it's deeply unfair," the posters say, "that the prime minister should go to Tahiti at his own expense after an event that will be much luckier for us than for him".
Guarienti then tells his fellow citizens how to contribute to three bank accounts, entitled Let's Send Him To Tahiti, which he has opened at Verona banks. He stresses that he only needs enough money for a one-way ticket.
Guarienti, a former election candidate for the post-Christian Democrat People's Party, is expected to donate any money he gets to charity. The premier came out with his jocular post-election exit strategy on September 4, saying he was "ready to sacrifice
himself" for another five years but would sail off into the sunset if he lost.
Two days later he made it clear it was just a joke and he had "serious plans" for life after politics.
