Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was on the ropes on Monday after a long-standing ally said he should resign if the allegations leveled at him in the latest of several sex scandals were shown to be true.
Berlusconi was thrown on to the defensive last week by claims he used his influence to secure the release of a teenage belly dancer accused of theft in May. The commander of the Milan police station from which she was released was questioned by a prosecutor about the incident on Monday, which may expose Berlusconi to a criminal charge of abusing his authority. The commander, Vincenzo Indolfi, has been quoted as saying the police were misled into believing the then-17-year-old girl — the daughter of a Moroccan immigrant — was a relative of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Berlusconi has acknowledged he himself made the call.
Indolfi, who has since been promoted to a job in government, has insisted the correct procedures were followed. However, reports at the weekend indicated the girl’s release had not been authorized by the duty judge at the juvenile court, and that she was only formally made a suspect in the robbery case after the scandal broke.
Speaking on Sunday night, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Gianfranco Fini, said that if Berlusconi were shown to have intervened “it would be time to step down.”
Fini’s rightist National Alliance was allied to Berlusconi’s party for 15 years until the two merged to become the Freedom People (PdL) last year.
Since then, however, the formerly neo-fascist Fini has become an increasingly vociferous critic of the prime minister. In July some of his followers renounced the PdL whip to form groups of their own in both houses of parliament.
Fini’s role in the next few weeks will be crucial because he has the numbers to bring down the government. Opposition politicians have been openly pressing him to do so, and clear the way for either new elections or a cross-party, or non-party, transitional government.
Berlusconi has been in apparently desperate straits before and survived. Last year he was found to have a still-unexplained relationship with an 18-year-old aspiring showgirl and to have hosted parties for bevies of women, including prostitutes, at his residence in Rome. His plight looks particularly serious this time, with claims that he committed a criminal offence and his popularity is at its lowest since he returned to office in 2008.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not