Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has survived his first test in parliament since the breakup with a powerful ally, a victory that leaves his conservative government safely in place at least until after the summer.
However, Wednesday’s vote also exposed the erosion of Berlusconi’s majority after the split with long-time ally Gianfranco Fini, possibly giving the Italian leader a taste of troubles to come after the holiday break.
In a highly anticipated vote in the lower house of parliament, Berlusconi’s lawmakers defeated an opposition censure motion against a government official implicated in a corruption scandal.
The 299-229 vote was parliament’s last political significant act until September. It was seen as a test of strength for Berlusconi.
“This is a signal that we’re staying on and that there is no election now,” said Umberto Bossi, leader of the Northern League government party and, at this point, Berlusconi’s staunchest partner.
Lawmakers loyal to Fini abstained from the voting. Fini’s 33 deputies formed their own breakaway parliamentary group in the wake of the breakup, potentially depriving Berlusconi’s coalition of a majority in the lower house.
Wednesday’s decision to abstain kept Berlusconi afloat, but also showed that the prime minister’s grip is loosening and gave a measure of Fini’s clout.
Fini’s lawmakers sided with a group of centrist and moderate deputies, bringing the number of abstentions to 75. That is a significant force in the 630-member lower house, and there has been speculation that the lawmakers would merge into a single party.
Abstaining “is quite enough to signal that this is a major problem in Berlusconi’s majority. What is going to happen next is very difficult to foretell,” said Giovanni Orsina, political science professor at Rome’s LUISS university.
“Maybe they will still find a way to work together,” he said, “or maybe their roads are going to get more and more separated, and this means that there is a possibility ... of an early dissolution of parliament and elections.”
Berlusconi’s spectacular split with Fini played out with venomous accusations on both sides. Fini, currently serving as speaker of the lower house, had been an ally since Berlusconi’s entry into politics 16 years ago and is the co-founder of the People of Freedom party.
The two had bickered for months on a number of issues, most notably morality in politics in the wake of scandals hitting coalition members. Fini has taken a harsher stance than Berlusconi, demanding that public officials suspected of corruption resign.
Wednesday’s censure motion targeted Justice Ministry Undersecretary Giacomo Caliendo, who has been entangled in a probe looking into a secret association of powerful figures allegedly seeking to influence politics and justice. Caliendo has denied wrongdoing, and has refused to resign.
Last week, Berlusconi accused Fini of mounting an opposition from within and working against the government, effectively expelling him from the party. Fini said Berlusconi behaved more like a manager than a prime minister and claimed the right to dissent from him.
For all his acrimonious words, Fini said his lawmakers would support the government when it carries out the joint electoral platform under which the coalition was voted into power in 2008, but he added that they would oppose it when they consider its policies unjust or against the common good.
Berlusconi has issued reassurances that his government is stable.
However, in recent days he has also warned that he will push for early elections at the first sign of trouble.
In case of a government collapse, the president of the republic might seek to put a caretaker government in place or call early elections.
Italian analysts say that if the election is held very soon, Berlusconi might benefit because this would leave little time for Fini to organize his challenge. The main leftist opposition party is also seen as a weak contender. The government’s term ends in 2013.
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
RSS