Italian PM outflanks Silvio Berlusconi with choice of new president
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Version 0 of 1. Sergio Mattarella, the Sicilian judge and longtime critic of Silvio Berlusconi who was elected Italy’s new president at the weekend, will be sworn in on Tuesday in what is seen as a major defeat for the former prime minister and media mogul. Berlusconi has been a key player in Italian politics for more than 20 years, and has maintained influence despite a conviction for tax fraud. But a surprise – some are calling it machiavellian – move by prime minister Matteo Renzi to surreptitiously sideline Berlusconi in choosing Mattarella isolated the former conservative premier and exposed deep rifts within his centre-right Forza Italia party. The only piece of good news for Berlusconi on Monday came from a judge who reduced the current sentence he is serving by 45 days. Berlusconi had been granted a reprieve from his four-year sentence when he was ordered in 2014 to do community service for one year instead. Mattarella, a former Christian Democrat, entered public life after the 1980 assassination of his brother, the former governor of Sicily who was killed by the mafia. He is expected to use his address on Tuesday to call for national unity and for politics to focus on the real problems facing Italians. The selection of Mattarella has been hailed as a master stroke by centrist Renzi but has also cast some doubts over the future of his reform agenda, which is seen as important for overhauling Italy’s paralysed political system. Since Renzi rose to power following a party coup last year, he and Berlusconi have been engaged in a fragile pact in which Berlusconi agreed to support the prime minister’s reform agenda even though he heads the opposition party. Some of the reforms are disliked by the left flank of Renzi’s Democratic party (PD) and Berlusconi’s backing has been seen as necessary. Renzi downplayed doubts about whether he could still pass the reform laws following a break with Berlusconi. “The election of the head of state puts the reforms on turbo, it doesn’t slow them,” Renzi told RTL radio on Monday. The choice Berlusconi faces now is whether to continue to support Renzi, or whether to break their pact, which could trigger a political crisis and the dissolution of parliament at a time when Forza Italia’s popularity is waning. Vincenzo Scarpetta, a political analyst at Open Europe, a thinktank, said that if Berlusconi bowed out of the pact, it could spell bad news for Renzi, who has devoted his first year in power to electoral and constitutional reforms. But Renzi probably calculated that Berlusconi has too much to lose. “Berlusconi needs Renzi more than Renzi needs Berlusconi,” Scarpetta says. Indeed, Renzi said on Monday that he believed it was in Forza Italia’s interest to support the reforms. “There’s no sense in throwing everything into doubt,” he said. The MPs in Forza Italia may yet have other ideas, however, with the most conservative members cautioning that their popularity is waning in part because they have been too cooperative with Renzi. |