Silvio Berlusconi U-turn keeps Italy's grand coalition afloat

Former prime minister retracts threat to make his party's MPs vote against Enrico Letta's coalition after facing party rebellion

theguardian.com, Lizzy Davies in Rome, Wednesday 2 October 2013

Link to video: Silvio Berlusconi backs Italy's coalition government in u-turn

Italy's grand coalition government looks certain to limp on after Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister who had brought it to the brink of collapse with a threat to withdraw his MPs, backed down at the last minute when it became clear that rebels from his own party would allow a confidence vote to pass.

In an unusually curt statement in the upper house of parliament, the 77-year-old – who was convicted of tax fraud in August – said his deeply divided centre-right Freedom People (PdL) party would vote as a block to support Enrico Letta's coalition.

It was a humiliating defeat for the man who has dominated the Italian political landscape for two decades, even if, by choosing to support the government, he will no doubt reserve the right to present himself as a responsible statesman.

"Italy needs a government that can carry out structural and institutional reforms which the country needs to modernise," said Berlusconi, who looked tired and solemn during the morning's debates. "We have decided, not without internal strife, to vote in confidence."

The statement was a remarkable volte face from a man who on Saturday plunged the eurozone's third largest economy into political turmoil by announcing he was withdrawing his ministers from the coalition, nominally in protest over fiscal policy.

That strategy quickly proved problematic when four of the five ministers – including his party secretary, Angelino Alfano – said they were against it. Alfano then emerged as de facto leader of a breakaway rebel faction. In an increasingly bizarre political dance, Letta then refused the resignations that they had offered.

Upon entering the senate on Wednesday, Berlusconi had indicated he was keeping an open mind on which way to order the party to vote. Later senior PdL figures said the party had decided to vote "in unanimity" against the government.

But, as the true nature of that "unanimity" became clear and 25 MPs were reported to be ready to vote for the government, with a further 24 prepared to absent themselves, the three-times prime minister was confronted with the prospect of being on the losing side of a historic battle.

Berlusconi's forced U-turn was a significant victory for Letta. Italy, a country still in its longest postwar recession, will be spared an immediate crisis, which the 47-year-old, of the centre-left Democratic party, had earlier warned would be "potentially fatal".

But for a prime minister who had hoped the vote could just possibly open the way to a new majority with more moderates and fewer hawkish Berlusconi allies, it was arguably a hollow victory. For almost its entire five-month lifetime, the coalition has jumped from crisis to crisis, and been fraught with tensions, spats and profound ideological differences.

Christopher Duggan, professor of Italian history at the University of Reading, said: "Berlusconi's humiliating U-turn, in the face of the impending defection of some two dozen of his party's senators, is an enormous boost to the prime minister, Enrico Letta, and to his government. It leaves Berlusconi greatly weakened, and with the judicial noose tightening around him, his political star now looks to be firmly waning. However, the increasingly fraught and unstable character of the party political landscape in Italy leaves the government facing some difficult times ahead if it is to pass much-needed reforms."

Earlier on Wednesday, Letta urged senators to search their consciences and support his government in a make-or-break confidence vote. In a speech, he said it was up to MPs from all sides of the spectrum to save the country from government collapse.

"Italy is running a risk that is potentially fatal, without remedy," he said. "Thwarting this risk, to seize or not seize the moment, depends on the choices we will make in this chamber. It depends on a yes or a no."

In the most important speech of his career, Letta urged senators to accept that Italy's government could not be held hostage by Berlusconi's increasingly pressing legal woes. Because of his conviction, the billionaire media magnate faces imminent expulsion from the Senate.

In a direct rebuke to Berlusconi, Letta said the interests of one person and those of an entire nation "neither could nor can overlap". In a democratic state, he added, "sentences are respected and enforced".

Berlusconi has to choose by the middle of this month whether to serve his sentence under house arrest or in community services. Italians, said Letta, were sick and tired of "blood and theatrics" and of "politicians who butcher each other and then change nothing".

As Italy showed signs of recovering economically, the country needed a government that focused on its pressing socioeconomic problems, which include record youth unemployment and a public debt of over €2tn (£1.7tn).

Plunging it back into political limbo would delay efforts to help struggling businesses, embarrass Italy in Europe, and hit hardest ordinary families who have suffered the most during the economic downturn, he said.

In a final appeal that referred obliquely to Berlusconi, he asked senators for courage and confidence to avoid being hit by "shameful regret". He said it would be "a confidence [vote] that is not against anyone; a confidence [vote] that is for Italy".

If the government was able to continue, he said, it would exercise tight control over public finances and avoid the deficit running over 3%. If it was struck down and a new election had to be held, he said, Italy ran a risk of fresh ungovernability, with a deadlocked parliament likely due to an electoral law that Letta says is a reform priority.

The prime minister's speech began by quoting Luigi Einaudi, a former Italian president. "In the lives of nations, the mistake of not knowing how to seize the fleeting moment is irreparable," he said.

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goldenageofgaia.com, Steve Beckow, An Hour with an Angel, September 30, 2013, with Archangel Michael

SB: All right. Maybe I can squeeze in one or two questions just before we go.

At this moment it seems as if in the American political spectrum the same blind opposition to President Obama is still apparent. When and how will the governments of the world emerge as uncorrupted institutions, given that there will now be a wholesale move towards new administrations? I don’t mean a toppling of administrations, but a reformation throughout the world.

AAM: The political landscape, not only in the United States but in many places, is going to shift rather dramatically in the coming year, and particularly within the next several months. Do not be overly concerned about opposition to Obama. What it is doing is bringing to the forefront — and making it very public — those who do not wish this energy [Obama] to be in a leadership position. That is not going to change. It will come to the forefront and the light will win.

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SB: Oh, that’s good to hear. So many people are bankrupted by a sudden illness. And it never should be that way.

AAM: It is an atrocity that one may suffer and die because one does not have adequate money. That is absurd.