Silvio Berlusconi supports Italian government in humiliating U-turn

Silvio Berlusconi reluctantly supported the Italian government in a key confidence vote on Wednesday after a mutiny within his own party.


In an embarrassing U-turn that could herald the end of his tumultuous political career, the media tycoon abandoned his bid to topple the coalition government of which his People of Freedom party is a member.
The 77-year-old billionaire had been threatening for weeks to torpedo the shaky coalition led by Enrico Letta, the centre-Left prime minister, and had ordered his loyalists to vote against the coalition in the Senate vote.
His aim had been to bring down the government before a vote on Friday on whether or not the former prime minister should be evicted from the senate because of conviction for fraud.
But he miscalculated badly and his threats backfired in dramatic fashion, in a serious set-back for a man formerly known for an unerring political judgment.
Instead of kowtowing, a large number of his senators openly defied him before the vote, declaring that they would instead support the government in the interests of rebuilding Italy’s stability and credibility.

Faced with the unprecedented revolt within PDL, Mr Berlusconi changed his mind at the last minute, standing up in parliament and announcing that he would, after all, support the government.
"Italy needs a government that can produce structural and institutional reforms that the country needs to modernize. We have decided, not without internal strife, to vote in confidence," he said, in a tone stripped of the bellicosity of recent days.
The cave-in handed his political opponents on the Left a resounding victory – the confidence vote was passed easily, with 235 senators voting in favour and only 70 against.
The ignominious climb-down eroded Mr Berlusconi’s waning credibility and raised questions as to whether, after 20 years of broken promises, lurid sex scandals and corruption trials, his political career was finally spluttering out.
Frantic jockeying in the days before the vote had showed that a significant number of his supporters were prepared to rebel against him and that his party has been split, perhaps irrevocably.
The rebels were led by one of the billionaire businessman’s closest confidantes – Angelino Alfano, the 42-year-old national secretary of the party and Mr Berlusconi’s anointed political heir.
“Alfano betrays” was the headline in Wednesday’s Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family.
Mr Alfano had gone from being a prince-in-waiting to playing the role of Brutus to Mr Berlusconi’s Caesar, masterminding the plot to have him stabbed in the back, commentators said.
“Berlusconi's humiliating u-turn is an enormous boost to Enrico Letta and to his government,” said Prof Christopher Duggan, an expert on Italian politics from Reading University.
“It leaves Berlusconi greatly weakened, and with the judicial noose tightening around him, his political star now looks to be firmly waning.”
Mr Berlusconi sparked the crisis on Saturday, when he ordered the five ministers from his party who serve in the coalition to resign.
But within hours of that diktat there were rumblings of dissent, with more conciliatory members of the party saying they would instead side with the government, in a highly unusual rejection of his authority.
Mr Letta told the upper house that it was crucial that his five-month-old government was given a firm mandate so that it could continue tackling Italy’s mountainous political debt, reform its dysfunctional political system and breathe life into a stagnant economy that has produced a youth unemployment level of more than 40 per cent.
It was imperative that the country overcame the “cataclysm” of its worst recession since the Second World War, the prime minister said.
"Italy is running a risk that could be fatal, without remedy. Thwarting this risk depends on the choices we will make in this chamber. It depends on a yes or a no," he told senators, as a tired-looking Mr Berlusconi looked on.
Italians were tired of constant fighting between the Left and Right.
"The country is exhausted by thousands of conflicts, by a political world that is always brawling. I say no more politics of the trenches. Let's concentrate on what needs doing,” he said.
Mr Berlusconi’s troubles do not end with his humiliating volte-face.
A Senate committee will vote on Friday on whether to recommend expelling him from politics for good, after he was convicted in August of tax fraud and given a four-year sentence.
The motion will then be put to the entire Senate in mid-October.
Under a law passed last year, anyone given a sentence of longer than two years is barred from public office.
Mr Berlusconi will not go to prison but is instead expected to be put under house arrest or made to do some form of community service for 12 months.
Despite the acute problems he faces, Mr Berlusconi has shown himself to be remarkably resilient – both financially and politically – and his political obituary should not be written just yet, analysts said.
“Berlusconi has seven lives and it is not out of the question that he could invent an eighth one,” Antonio Polito, a political commentator, wrote in the leading Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
“The splits in his party are probably irrevocable and his prestige and influence is certainly diminished by what happened today,” said James Walston, a professor at the American University of Rome.
“But he still commands a lot of loyalty, both within the party and among the electorate. It is waning, but it is still there.”

Bron: The Telegraph online
Datum: 02-10-2013
Titel: "Silvio Berlusconi supports Italian government in humiliating U-turn"
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ing-U-turn.html

Eigen mening: Ik vrees dat het zijn laatste stuiptrekkingen zijn op politiek vlak. De Italiaanse oud-premier heeft al heel wat trucs uitgehaald, en mee weg gekomen. Maar met zijn laatste dreigementen is hij op een (interne) njet gebotst. Nu kan ik me inbeelden wat een dergelijke publieke vernedering met een über-macho als Berlusconi teweeg brengt. Veroordeling of niet ik denk niet dat hij nog veel zal doen hierna, simpelweg omdat zijn veer na deze zoveelste vernedering op korte tijd gebroken is