Italy: on the brink, once again

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/29/italy-berlusconi-on-brink-again-editorial

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What goes on in Silvio Berlusconi's mind is a mystery even to Italy's seasoned analysts. It was, above all, in his interests for his party to stay in the fragile coalition government. With the vote coming up in a senate committee on whether Mr Berlusconi should retain his seat in the upper house of parliament, why infuriate President Giorgio Napolitano, who yesterday vowed he would only dissolve parliament as a last resort? Why pull his five ministers out of government, demanding elections "as soon as possible" on Saturday night, only to backtrack on Sunday morning when he saw how much hostility there was to the idea in his own party? After a full night's sleep (the first, he claimed, in 59 nights since his criminal conviction for tax fraud), he decided his party could support the 2014 budget, if it was "really useful to Italy".

What is patently unhelpful is the continued presence of this man in Italian politics. At the age of 77, he may take some perverse delight in his power to hold coalition governments hostage. But when you have a man who is incapable of separating his fate – his mounting legal problems, mood swings and gambler's habits – from his country's fate, you have a recipe for disaster. The eurozone's third-biggest economy is struggling to emerge from a two-year recession, a €2tn public debt and youth unemployment of 40%. If the yield gap between Italian and German 10-year bonds does indeed widen significantly when the markets open today, Mr Berlusconi is playing with fire.

The pretext for his latest tantrum was a government decision to proceed with a one percentage point rise in sales tax from 1 October. The centre-left prime minister Enrico Letta, whose uncle Gianni is a Berlusconi confidant and was supposed to act as a back channel, rightly denounced the decision to break the coalition as mad and irresponsible. The key question now is how many senators in the upper house agree with him. There are three potential groups from which the prime minster can look for support: disgruntled members of Mr Berlusconi's own party (three of the five ministers who said they would resign did not agree with the decision); defectors from Beppe Grillo's anti-establishment Five Star Movement (there could be as many as 10 of these); and four people recently nominated by the president as senators-for-life. While Mr Letta's centre-left party has a majority in the lower house, both Mr Berlusconi and Mr Grillo hold a blocking majority in the senate.

If Mr Berlusconi succeeds in bringing down the government, it is doubtful that he himself will ever be able to run for office. It is now surely up to senators to show the responsibility that this political gambler lacks. Mr Letta's address to parliament tomorrow will be one to watch.

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