[attach id=270482 size="medium"]Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the end of a rally to protest against his tax fraud conviction, outside his palace in central Rome, yesterday. Photo: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters[/attach]

Thousands of supporters of Silvio Berlusconi protested in Rome yesterday against a tax fraud conviction that has rocked Italy’s fragile coalition, but the centre-right leader said the government must continue.

Addressing the 2,000-strong crowd, a subdued Berlusconi again bitterly attacked what he calls leftist judges and insisted he was innocent, but said he would continue to support the shaky coalition of his centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party with the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) of Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

“We have said loud and clear that the government must go forward to approve the economic measures that we asked for and were agreed,” Berlusconi told the rally, making clear that he was in no rush to force a snap election as some of his hawkish supporters have demanded.

“What drives us is not our personal interests. Always the interests of everyone and of our Italy come first.”

Dressed in a navy T-shirt under a suit jacket, the 76-year-old’s restrained performance was a contrast to his usual ebullient public appearances, and his voice cracked several times during the address.

Italy’s supreme court on Thursday upheld a four-year jail sentence – commuted to one year – for the media mogul. It was the first definitive conviction he has suffered in dozens of trials since he stormed into politics in 1994. He says leftist magistrates are trying to subvert democracy by forcing him out of politics.

He is expected to serve the sentence either under house arrest in one of his luxurious residences or doing community service. Offenders over 70 are not normally sent to jail.

The PDL has been lobbying for President Giorgio Napolitano to pardon Berlusconi, which political sources say he has angrily rejected as impossible for several reasons, including because Berlusconi is still awaiting a verdict in an appeal against a conviction for paying for sex with a minor in the so-called “Rubygate” scandal.

The level of anger in the PDL over the sentence and PD insistence that the law must be upheld have raised real fears of a collapse of the coalition government.

But even if the government continues, the strife is likely to dim hopes for reforms desperately needed to drag the eurozone’s third largest economy out of its longest post-war recession.

Defence minister Mario Mauro told newspaper Il Sussidiario earlier there was an awareness in the government that the delicate coalition risked breakdown, but any move towards elections is unlikely until Parliament returns from its summer recess and Italians from their sacrosanct August holidays.

After his speech, in which he defiantly said he would remain in the political fight, Berlusconi greeted emotional supporters, many of them women, in the crowd. Some of them wept as he shook their hands.

One of Berlusconi’s most loyal and hawkish supporters, PDL deputy Daniela Santanche, earlier threatened a mass resignation by centre-right lawmakers unless Napolitano issued a pardon, which she said was Berlusconi’s right.

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