ITALY - Game over for Berlusconi 09/11/2011
Tuesday was one of the longest days in Silvio Berlusconi’s 17 years in power. He went into it locked in a struggle with rebels in his own party who he tried to force to vote for a vital state finance bill, but when the vote came they ignored his threats and promises of rewards, and abstained.
The opposition also failed to vote, leaving Berlusconi with a 308 votes to none victory, but eight votes short of an absolute majority. He will resign once the financial laws are adopted.
“If you still have any sense of responsability faced with the Italian people, resign right now. We’ll do our job for the Country,” said opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani.
Berlusconi said tonight he would resign once the austerity measures Italy needs to make to satisfy the EU have been passed in parliament, and he will submit the financial package to a vote of confidence by mid-November.
A photographer snapped his debate notes – they read “8 traitors”, followed by the word “resign”, and then the cryptic “one solution”.
It is an ignominious end to a political era that has seen Italy dazzled and repulsed in equal measure by Berlusconi’s larger-than-life personality. At 75 there is surely no way back for him now, and judges up and down the land may be relishing the chance to at last nail him on one of the many corruption cases he has to face, but has avoided while in office.
Silvio Berlusconi found himself in a place with nowhere to turn. Under pressure in the Italian parliament and with euro zone leaders calling for reform, the beleaguered premier explained his reasons for going in a phone interview on one of his own television channels.
“The government does not have the majority we thought we had and so we have to take account of this situation realistically and look after the Italian position. Everything else, including who leads the government, is secondary at the moment. Working for the good of Italy is the important thing.”
Shortly afterwards ordinary Italians began to react to the news that the Berlusconi era would soon be coming to a close.
Giulio said: “Let’s hope for new things. Otherwise we’ll be back at square one. Whoever steps in , we’ve already arrived at the point of no return.”
Giuseppe Bianco had a different view:
“The issue doesn’t lie with the premier’s resignation, it’s the national crisis. We’ve just woken up from a nightmare and we’ve found ourselves right behind Greece.”
Silvio Berlusconi has been able to bounce back over the years no matter what his detractors threw at him, including outside Milan Cathedral in 2009, when an onlooker hurled a damaging object at the now 75-year-old billionaire.
He is more used to the business and political arena. He took Italy by storm in 1994, forming a new party and winning the country’s most dramatic general election in 50 years. He promised ‘El Dorado’ and new accountability to an electorate tired of left-right uncertainty and corruption.
But the volatility of Italy’s political scene is such that disputes among coalition partners within months saw the government and Berlusconi’s premiership crumple.
The courts saw a lot of him. Berlusconi has faced charges of corruption, fraud and bribery but proved to be a difficult man to pin down — still harder to sentence.
Pundits predicted his battles with the magistrates would turn the tycoon off politics. Then he swept to power, again, in 2001 with the biggest majority in the history of the Italian Republic.
But oh! the gaffes: like the start of Italy’s six-month term as EU president when he likened a German MEP to a Nazi stooge.
In spite of this he kept his popularity at home, though his third term was marked by more controversy.
A sex scandal too far came from allegations that he helped avoid jail for a young woman known as Ruby the Heartbreaker. The calls for him to resign spread, ever louder.
And yet Berlusconi shrugged his way through all of it — until the third largest economy in the euro zone wriggled helpless in the jaws of financial crisis. There were even critics in his own party who lambasted how he handled it.
Austerity protests multiplied, and Berlusconi just survived a confidence vote last month, even with his government in a snare of disputes over policies. It would prove merely a postponement of humiliation.
Tuesday was one of the longest days in Silvio Berlusconi’s 17 years in power. He went into it locked in a struggle with rebels in his own party who he tried to force to vote for a vital state finance bill, but when the vote came they ignored his threats and promises of rewards, and abstained.
The opposition also failed to vote, leaving Berlusconi with a 308 votes to none victory, but eight votes short of an absolute majority. He will resign once the financial laws are adopted.
“If you still have any sense of responsability faced with the Italian people, resign right now. We’ll do our job for the Country,” said opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani.
Berlusconi said tonight he would resign once the austerity measures Italy needs to make to satisfy the EU have been passed in parliament, and he will submit the financial package to a vote of confidence by mid-November.
A photographer snapped his debate notes – they read “8 traitors”, followed by the word “resign”, and then the cryptic “one solution”.
It is an ignominious end to a political era that has seen Italy dazzled and repulsed in equal measure by Berlusconi’s larger-than-life personality. At 75 there is surely no way back for him now, and judges up and down the land may be relishing the chance to at last nail him on one of the many corruption cases he has to face, but has avoided while in office.
Silvio Berlusconi found himself in a place with nowhere to turn. Under pressure in the Italian parliament and with euro zone leaders calling for reform, the beleaguered premier explained his reasons for going in a phone interview on one of his own television channels.
“The government does not have the majority we thought we had and so we have to take account of this situation realistically and look after the Italian position. Everything else, including who leads the government, is secondary at the moment. Working for the good of Italy is the important thing.”
Shortly afterwards ordinary Italians began to react to the news that the Berlusconi era would soon be coming to a close.
Giulio said: “Let’s hope for new things. Otherwise we’ll be back at square one. Whoever steps in , we’ve already arrived at the point of no return.”
Giuseppe Bianco had a different view:
“The issue doesn’t lie with the premier’s resignation, it’s the national crisis. We’ve just woken up from a nightmare and we’ve found ourselves right behind Greece.”
Silvio Berlusconi has been able to bounce back over the years no matter what his detractors threw at him, including outside Milan Cathedral in 2009, when an onlooker hurled a damaging object at the now 75-year-old billionaire.
He is more used to the business and political arena. He took Italy by storm in 1994, forming a new party and winning the country’s most dramatic general election in 50 years. He promised ‘El Dorado’ and new accountability to an electorate tired of left-right uncertainty and corruption.
But the volatility of Italy’s political scene is such that disputes among coalition partners within months saw the government and Berlusconi’s premiership crumple.
The courts saw a lot of him. Berlusconi has faced charges of corruption, fraud and bribery but proved to be a difficult man to pin down — still harder to sentence.
Pundits predicted his battles with the magistrates would turn the tycoon off politics. Then he swept to power, again, in 2001 with the biggest majority in the history of the Italian Republic.
But oh! the gaffes: like the start of Italy’s six-month term as EU president when he likened a German MEP to a Nazi stooge.
In spite of this he kept his popularity at home, though his third term was marked by more controversy.
A sex scandal too far came from allegations that he helped avoid jail for a young woman known as Ruby the Heartbreaker. The calls for him to resign spread, ever louder.
And yet Berlusconi shrugged his way through all of it — until the third largest economy in the euro zone wriggled helpless in the jaws of financial crisis. There were even critics in his own party who lambasted how he handled it.
Austerity protests multiplied, and Berlusconi just survived a confidence vote last month, even with his government in a snare of disputes over policies. It would prove merely a postponement of humiliation.
