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.
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