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New Turmoil for Italy Amid Resignation of 5 in Berlusconi’s Party
Resignations In Italy Put Government In Crisis
(about 4 hours later)
ROME — Italy faced growing political uncertainty on Sunday, in the hours after five ministers in former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right party resigned, setting off a new crisis that could put the political and financial stability of Europe at risk.
ROME — Prime Minister Enrico Letta said that he would call for a confidence vote in Parliament, most likely on Wednesday, to clear up the political uncertainty surrounding his fragile government after the sudden resignation of five ministers belonging to Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right party.
Prime Minister Enrico Letta was expected to meet with President Giorgio Napolitano late Sunday afternoon to discuss how to move forward.
In the vote, “everyone will assume their own responsibility, all above board,” Mr. Letta said on Italian television Sunday night, shortly after meeting with President Giorgio Napolitano to discuss the government crisis prompted by the walkout.
Mr. Letta’s five-month-old government, a broad coalition of politically antagonistic parties, has felt the strains of its differences since its inception in April. But tensions have increased since Mr. Berlusconi lost a final appeal in a tax fraud case last month.
The unexpected move on Saturday by Mr. Berlusconi’s allies raised concerns that Italy’s troubles may threaten the current political and financial stability in Europe. Political commentators speculated gloomily over the weekend about how the financial markets would react on Monday.
Mr. Berlusconi is to begin serving a one-year sentence — most likely under house arrest — in mid-October. The former prime minister, who is standing trial in other cases, has also been barred from holding public office, though the length of that ban is still under discussion. A parliamentary committee will meet on Friday to decide whether to expel him from the Senate.
Mr. Letta also made clear that he would no longer be bound by the whims of Mr. Berlusconi’s People of Liberty party, which has been a mainstay of Italy’s broad coalition government, formed five months ago after elections in February failed to produce a clear majority.
Mr. Berlusconi believes that he has been unjustly disqualified from the political arena by his adversaries, and has pledged to remain very much a player.
“I have no intention to govern at all costs,” he said on Sunday. “Today the conditions are to have the confidence of Parliament — not for three days, but to go ahead and apply a program.”
“I’m not tired of fighting,” Mr. Berlusconi told supporters in Naples on Sunday. Speaking to a rally by telephone, he said he saw early elections as the only option out of the crisis.
Tensions within the coalition government erupted as a Senate committee prepared to decide whether Mr. Berlusconi would retain his seat in the upper house, after his conviction last month in a tax fraud case. He is supposed to begin serving a one-year sentence, most likely in the form of house arrest, in mid-October.
But Mr. Napolitano has said repeatedly that as Italy continues to reel under the impact of a two-year recession, an early vote is the least advantageous option. Polls suggest that more elections would be likely to result in another stalemate, with no party getting enough votes to form a stable government.
The ostensible breaking point for Mr. Berlusconi was the government’s failure to take measures to stop a scheduled increase of one percentage point in the country’s value-added tax, to 22 percent. He said on Sunday that his party had promised during the election campaign to halt the increase, and that the only alternative was to hold early elections.
Mr. Napolitano said Sunday that he would pursue other avenues before dissolving Parliament. “I will see what possibilities exist to continue with this legislature,” he said. “It is the tradition of the president of the Republic to dissolve Parliament only when he’s not able to put together a government in the interests of the country.”
But Mr. Napolitano said on Sunday that he would not call a new election unless all other possibilities were exhausted first.
Political commentators said that Mr. Berlusconi’s decision was contrary to the interests of the country, throwing Parliament into chaos just days before the country is to present its budget plans for 2014.
There were signs that not all of Mr. Berlusconi’s party agreed with his decision to withdraw from the government. The party’s five ministers evidently were not consulted; several of them issued statements questioning the decision-making process that led to the sudden demand that they resign. The dissent within the party raised the possibility that some disaffected People of Liberty lawmakers might give Mr. Letta the votes he needs to survive the confidence vote.
On Friday, the International Monetary Fund had warned that Italy’s economic outlook “remains weak, and the financial system is still vulnerable.”
“There is a climate of evident uncertainly regarding the possible developments of the political situation,” Mr. Napolitano said in a note issued Sunday. Parliament, he said, is the “proper place for clarification.”
Last week, as tensions in Parliament grew, church leaders and industrialists warned that Italy could ill afford a government crisis with the country at economic risk.
In a front-page editorial in the Turin newspaper La Stampa, the editor, Mario Calabresi, chided Mr. Berlusconi for opening a “useless and disastrous crisis,” that risked humiliating Italy, undermining the country’s credibility and putting it once again under the unforgiving microscope of international investors. This crisis, he wrote, “confirms every bad stereotype about Italians.”
Mr. Berlusconi prompted the government crisis on Saturday when he called on his ministers to resign, ostensibly in protest against the government’s failure to take measures to stop a 1 percent increase in the value-added tax that will go into effect on Oct. 1. Continuing to support a government that raises taxes, he said, would be betraying those who had voted for him.
But critics, including Mr. Letta, who issued a harsh statement on Saturday calling Mr. Berlusconi’s gesture “mad and irresponsible,” say the resignations are part of an effort to somehow put off Mr. Berlusconi’s impending ouster from the Senate.
There are also grumblings within Mr. Berlusconi’s party, which was rebaptized this month as Forza Italia, the name of the first political movement that brought him into power 19 years ago, about the handling of the resignations. Mr. Berlusconi is said to have decided during a meeting with a few trusted loyalists without consulting a majority of party leaders, or the ministers. Deputy Prime Minister Angelino Alfano, the party’s secretary, was not present at the meeting.
If the decision is taken, “without the secretary being present, then the party has been genetically modified,” said the constitutional reforms minister, Gaetano Quagliarello, who resigned but said that he would abandon Forza Italia. Minister of Health Beatrice Lorenzin also said she would leave the party.
Regardless of how the crisis plays out, Mr. Berlusconi, who turned 77 on Sunday, cannot change his immediate future, and he will begin serving his sentence on Oct. 15. The suspicion increases that “Berlusconi believes that his personal destiny must coincide with that of the center-right and of the entire country,” wrote the columnist Pierluigi Battista in a front-page editorial in Corriere della Sera on Sunday. Mr. Berlusconi’s game is that after him, “there must be only the deluge.”
