Italy’s Senate passed into law on Tuesday a bill effectively shielding Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from prosecution while in office, a move critics say aims to protect him from corruption charges.
The law grants political immunity to the incumbents of Italy’s four most powerful positions: the posts of prime minister, president and the speakers of the two parliamentary chambers.
It was approved by 171 votes to 128 against, with six abstentions, the ANSA news agency reported.
Italy’s lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, approved the bill earlier this month.
The most immediate beneficiary of the law is Berlusconi, who had been facing trial on a charge of having paid his British lawyer David Mills, US$600,000 to give favorable testimony in two trials.
The pair, along with a dozen other defendants, were on trial in Milan for tax fraud in the purchase of film rights in the US by Mediaset, the television group owned by the Berlusconi family.
Berlusconi, 71, has repeatedly accused magistrates, notably in his native Milan, of conducting a politically motivated campaign against him.
He was elected to a third stint as prime minister in April, but this time his coalition had a strong enough majority to pass the controversial proposals, which he had tried unsuccessfully to usher in during previous terms in office.
Earlier on Tuesday Justice Minister Angiolino Alfano defended the bill in a speech to the Senate just hours before the final vote.
“To critics who have called into question the speed with which this law has been presented ... I say that this law is not premature, nor too late, it is right,” said Alfano, in comments reported by ANSA.
The immunity law had been vigorously opposed both by magistrates and much of the left-wing opposition. It is one of the measures that Berlusconi’s critics said were designed to protect him from the corruption trials that have pursued him for many years.
Berlusconi, a self-made billionaire, has faced charges including corruption, tax fraud, false accounting and illegally financing political parties.
Although some initial judgments have gone against him he has never been definitively convicted.
The media magnate’s battles with the law have marked his public life since he burst onto the political scene in the mid-1990s.
Under the new law, any statute of limitations applying to a case would be suspended until the defendant left office. But the immunity could not apply in the case of a politician moving from one of the four posts to another.
Berlusconi plans further reforms of the judiciary for the autumn. He says they are designed to speed up the notoriously slow progress of legal cases through the courts.
But he also wants to curb what he sees as the excessive powers of the magistrates, reforming the top magistrates’ council that appoints judges.
“Changing the composition [of the council] is dangerous and would lead to a loss of independence” for magistrates, said Edmondo Brutti Liberati, former head of another body, the National Magistrates’ Association.
The current independence of Italy’s magistrates dates back to the post-war era, when a strong court system was seen as a bulwark against a repeat of fascism.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS