Antonio di Pietro is a man with a mission -- and after a summer combing Italy's beaches and bars in pursuit of half a million citizens who share his zeal, his mission is near completion. He is closing in on his prey, Italy's controversial Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, with grim determination.
"If you're president, you can kill your wife and no one will stop you!" Di Pietro shouts down a megaphone as people stroll by on a warm summer evening. "Listen to me! I'm one of those mad people who thinks the law should be equal for everyone."
Passers-by slow down, half amused, half embarrassed, pull out their ID cards and start signing up. Along a row of makeshift trestle tables in a Bologna park, the lists begin to grow of Italians remembering to be angry at a law rushed through earlier this year that saved their billionaire tycoon prime minister from a corruption trial.
"I'm so embarrassed," said 31 year-old Ivan Pissiran. "We've got a prime minister who's made himself above the law. He's in government because it's the only way to stay out of prison. And Italians are so fast asleep they won't do anything about it."
The day after a law was passed in June suspending trials against Italy's top five serving officials, Di Pietro, who made his name in Italy as the judge who led the Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) anti-corruption revolution more than a decade ago, unleashed an army of 6,000 grannies, children and friends to travel around Italy, collecting signatures against the immunity law.
Almost three months later -- after a summer of approaching holiday-makers in bikinis on Italy's boiling beaches -- Di Pietro's team have rounded up half a million signatures, the minimum required by law to force a referendum.
"Everyone thought I was mad when we started this," the dapper 52 year-old lawyer turned politician said as he rummaged through piles of petition forms in his office in Bologna.
The campaign is his latest move as an independent politician, heading a party called Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values).
Battered by Italy's media as he handled 12,000 corruption cases during the Mani Pulite investigations, Di Pietro subsequently filed more than 300 libel suits against them. He launched his party with the indemnity money he won, including 400 million lire from Berlusconi's brother Paolo, owner of Il Giornale newspaper.
Berlusconi claims he is innocent of the corruption charges and accuses Italy's judges of mounting a left-wing conspiracy to bring down his government for a second time. While many Italians believe him, others remain indignant that the law was changed just as their prime minister's trial was drawing to a close.
On Sept. 25, just five days before the annual deadline set by Italian law for such petitions, Di Pietro plans to drive two lorries loaded with 500,000 signatures up to the door of Italy's Court of Cassation. If the court accepts the petition, it will approve a referendum that could put the Italian prime minister back on trial next year.
But for Berlusconi's governing coalition, Di Pietrois living on another planet.
"He hasn't realized that Italy is full of sensible people," said Renato Schifani, the senator from Berlusconi's Forza Italia party who submitted the legal amendment approved in June. "Most people agree that the prime minister should spend his time ruling the country, not fighting lawsuits."
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