ITALY: A Handful of Votes Could Decide Berlusconi's Future
ROME, Dic 19 (IPS) - A handful of votes in parliament will decide the destiny of the right-wing government headed by media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, who will be faced on Wednesday with censorship motions from opposition and former allied parties.
The chamber of deputies will vote on a censorship motion presented by the Northern League (LN) - which allied with Berlusconi in the elections that brought him to power - former christian democrats now grouped together in the Italian Popular Party (PPI) and the former communists of the Leftist Democratic Party (PDS).
Berlusconi called the move a "white-gloved coup d'etat" against his government, and said that if his administration falls new parliamentary elections will have to be called, only nine months after the previous ones.
If the censorship motion is approved, it will be up to President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro to call elections or name a new prime minister.
Berlusconi and his Italian Force movement have called on their supporters to turn out in force in front of parliament when the prime minister appears before the chamber of deputies on Wednesday.
The lira is once again suffering from the political crisis plaguing the country. Italy's national currency dropped to 1,650 against the dollar on Monday after closing at 1,644 on Friday, while it fell from 1.043 to 1.047 against the German mark.
An apparent schism in the LN is expected to decide the future of Berlusconi's government, which will fall or survive according to a handful of votes.
Senator Marcello Staglieno, vice-president of the parliament and the man heading the "uprising" of LN law-makers against party leader Umberto Bossi, warned Monday that 84 LN legislators will refuse to vote for the censorship motion.
If Staglieno's prediction holds true, the 161 LN legislators would be divided almost in half.
Thus Berlusconi could yet be saved because the 109 members of his Italian Force movement, the 109 lawmakers of the neofascist National Alliance, deputies from minority parties and dissidents from the LN would add up to a majority of 335 votes out of the chamber of deputies' total 630.
According to Minister of Institutional Reforms Francesco Speroni, Staglieno's threats are not well-founded. "Someone must have offered him a post as minister in the new government," Speroni claimed.
"It would not surprise me that LN deputies have already begun 'wheeling and dealing' to be part of a future majority (government)," he added.
Neither the LN nor the opposition are hoping for new parliamentary elections. Both are interested in seeing a majority government formed by the LN, the PPI and the PDS, as well as several minority parties.
Only the two extremes of Italy's political spectrum would remain outside that majority government: the Italian Force and the National Alliance on one hand, and the orthodox Communist 'Refoundation' on the other.
The new government would reform Italian electoral laws and implement anti-monopoly measures to block Berlusconi from continuing to collect television stations and newspapers, and would also call new elections in mid-1995.
© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service