Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi yesterday scraped through a crucial confidence vote in parliament, overcoming one of the most serious crises in his 16-year political career.
Berlusconi won with a razor-thin majority, as 314 lawmakers voted in his favor, with 311 against and two abstentions in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies lower house.
His government earlier won a comfortable majority in the Senate.
Tens of thousands of anti-Berlusconi protesters, meanwhile, marched through Italy’s biggest cities. Some of the protesters in Rome set off smoke flares, hurled bottles and threw firecrackers, while police fired tear gas.
“Summing up what’s wrong with Berlusconi would be a very long list, but basically he hasn’t managed to cope with the economic crisis,” said Andrea, a school pupil taking part in the protest in Rome.
Silvia, a teacher, said: “I don’t see a future for young people.”
The vote followed heated debates in both chambers of parliament and a fight broke out between some supporters and opponents of the prime minister in the tense minutes before the announcement of the result in the lower house.
Berlusconi earlier voiced confidence in a victorious outcome as he arrived in parliament and said he “absolutely excluded” his resignation, demanded by former allies from his center-right coalition who rebelled against him.
Berlusconi first launched himself onto a corruption-ridden political scene with an election win in 1994. He has since gone on to win two more elections in 2001 and 2008, brushing off a series of sex and graft scandals along the way.
The government’s current mandate is set to run out in 2013, but some analysts have argued that Italy will now still have to hold early parliamentary elections because the government’s narrow majority could paralyze parliament.
“This is a country that is tired and wants change,” said the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, Pier Luigi Bersani, ahead of the vote.
Antonio Di Pietro, a former anti-corruption judge and leader of the Italy of Values party, said Berlusconi’s “papier-mache empire” was finished.
“Go to the Bahamas. This is what awaits you — giving yourself up to the judiciary or fleeing,” Di Pietro shouted at Berlusconi.
However, Fabrizio Cicchitto, the leader of Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party in the lower house, said: “Berlusconi’s story is not over.”
The confidence vote followed a bitter split within the ruling coalition after a rebellion earlier this year of Berlusconi’s once-loyal ally Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of parliament, along with around 40 lawmakers.
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