Berlusconi’s Followers Threaten Fragile Truce in Italy
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Version 0 of 1. ROME — Lawmakers from former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s political party said Friday that they were prepared to resign en masse to protest Mr. Berlusconi’s definitive conviction for tax fraud, a move that would effectively sink the uneasy alliance supporting the government. The decision was made during a closed-door rally of elected members from Mr. Berlusconi’s People of Liberty party, who met with their leader the day after Italy’s highest court upheld Mr. Berlusconi’s four-year prison sentence, which had already been commuted to one year. The ruling “is groundless,” Mr. Berlusconi told his fellow party members, who greeted him with a standing ovation, according to fuzzy images of the rally that had apparently been recorded with a cellphone and were later broadcast on television. In a further show of support, the parliamentary leaders of his party said they would ask to meet with President Giorgio Napolitano to ask him to pardon Mr. Berlusconi and “defend the democracy of the country,” said Renato Brunetta, the People of Liberty leader in the lower house, the news agency Ansa reported. The angry reaction contradicted repeated pledges before the ruling that Mr. Berlusconi’s legal travails would have no bearing on the durability of the government, an unusual — and uneasy — alliance of political antagonists formed in April after two months of deadlock in the wake of inconclusive general elections. Instead, Mr. Berlusconi made clear Friday that the justice system must be changed immediately or the government would not stand. “It is our duty to enact a real reform of the justice system — for this we are ready to go to elections,” the former prime minister told lawmakers. Deputy Prime Minister Angelino Alfano said the center-right ministers in the current government of Prime Minister Enrico Letta were ready to resign if asked to do so, said a person who attended the meeting but spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media. But President Napolitano — who has the power to call new elections — has made clear that he is opposed to such a move because he fears market reaction to instability as Italy’s economy remains mired in its longest postwar recession. Mr. Berlusconi’s conviction spurred deep-rooted uncertainty within a party that must now grapple with a political future in which its founder and leader, who also faces a ban from public office, will have to redefine his dominant role. The conviction means that Mr. Berlusconi, whose sentence is likely to be served under house arrest or through community service, will be restricted in his movements. Under Italian law, Mr. Berlusconi has until Oct. 15 to specify which he would prefer. “Nothing has been decided so far,” one of his lawyers, Piersilvio Cipollotti, said Friday. A surveillance court will also decide the restrictions on Mr. Berlusconi’s interaction with the outside world, Mr. Cipollotti said. Mr. Berlusconi has also been banned from public office for five years, but in its ruling Thursday, the court sent the ban back to a lower court for review. A Senate committee for parliamentary immunity will convene next week to hold preliminary discussions on whether to strip Mr. Berlusconi, who is a senator, of his seat and enforce the ban. On Friday, Mr. Letta acknowledged that Italy was going through a “politically delicate moment” and said the only alternative for a country in an economically precarious state was to press on with this government and its mandate to enact desperately needed changes. “Italy must be put ahead of everything else,” Mr. Letta said at a news conference, adding that collective interests must prevail over partisan ones. “The country needs to be governed.” His words were meant as much for members of People of Liberty as for those from his own Democratic Party who are bristling at being part of a coalition that includes a convicted tax evader, and whose patience was tried further by the demands made Friday by Mr. Berlusconi and his supporters. “They can forget it,” the Democratic Party secretary, Guglielmo Epifani, said of the kind of judicial system reform sought by People of Liberty. Political commentators described the parrying as a game of chicken, with the fate of the government at risk. “Berlusconi has put the Democratic Party in crisis, putting them in a position where they could fall into the error of pulling the plug on the government,” said one commentator, Mario Sechi. “It’s like a game of war, seeing who will launch the first salvo.” <NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting. |