Fini piles pressure on Berlusconi

Italy’s speaker of Parliament yesterday threatened to pull his supporters out of the government if Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi did not resign, piling pressure on the Italian leader.

“He should... take the decision to hand in his resignation and declare there is a de facto crisis,” Gianfranco Fini said in a scathing attack on his former ally at a conference of his new political movement.

Mr Fini, who rebelled against Mr Berlusconi earlier this year, said the resignation should bring about a new chapter in Italian politics in which “the nature of the coalition and the composition of the government are re-discussed.”

He appeared to hint that a new government could be formed with Mr Berlusconi in charge but based on “a new legislative pact” with his own forces, experts said.

“We can’t go on like this,” Mr Fini said in front of some 10,000 supporters at the conference in the city of Perugia in central Italy of his Future and Freedom movement, which is in the process of becoming a political party. There are four pro-Fini ministers currently in the government.

Mr Fini, a former foreign minister, has long been seen as a powerful political player. But he has often been sidelined by Mr Berlusconi ever since the flamboyant media tycoon burst onto Italy’s political scene in the early 1990s.

Mr Fini announced in July that he and his supporters would break away from the ruling People of Freedom party although he made it clear that he would continue to support the government in parliament based on certain conditions.

Around 40 lawmakers from the lower and upper houses of parliament have gone over to Mr Fini’s side since July. Their defection, if finalised, means that Berlusconi would no longer have a governing majority in parliament.

Berlusconi supporters criticised Mr Fini yesterday, accusing him of using his post as speaker of Parliament to try to engineer a change of government and challenging him to have the courage to vote against Mr Berlusconi in Parliament.