ROME: “Time and age have no effect on me,” Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi recently boasted, showing off the wonders of a face-lift and hair transplant that make him look younger than his 69 years.

His political rival Romano Prodi also looks good for his 66 years — although he has not had any nips or tucks — and last December he ran his first marathon.

Meanwhile, Italy's 85-year-old President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi criss-crosses the country with great vigour pursuing a punishing schedule that would test a man half his age.

The trio's resilience is admirable, but no amount of cosmetic surgery or jogging can disguise the fact that Italy's political leaders are among the oldest in the world and show little inclination to make way for the younger generation.

The same phenomenon is reflected across Italian society, with an ageing elite guiding an increasingly aged population in a country with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.

A report prepared by the Rome-based think-tank Glocus says 54% of public leaders in Italy, defined as the 5,500 people listed in the 2004 edition of “Who's Who,” are over 60, up from 46% in 1998, with 23.4% over 70.

This defensive system is most visible in politics where the upper echelons have barely changed in a decade, surviving crushing defeats, crises and scandals with astonishing ease. Berlusconi and Prodi are challenging each other to become Prime Minister in 2006 just as they did in 1996.

And today, just as 10 years ago, all the main leaders of the centre-right coalition parties are the same, including Umberto Bossi, the head of the Northern League, who suffered heart failure in 2004 and walks and talks with difficulty.

It is a similar picture on the centre-left with only a couple of new faces managing to fight their way to the front. “How can young people get interested in politics? Who can they relate to?,” he says, pointing enviously to Britain, where Tony Blair became Prime Minister aged 43, and to Spain, where Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was also 43 when he became prime minister.

Part of the problem is that many Italians seem in no hurry to grow up and the country promotes a culture that encourages people to look young but act staid. A survey last year said 82% of Italian men aged between 18 and 30 live with their parents against 43% in the US, mainly because they liked being spoilt by their doting mammas and papas.

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