Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta warned of the risk of fresh political turmoil yesterday, a day before a Senate committee meets to decide whether to expel the country’s former leader Silvio Berlusconi from Parliament.
As the two main partners in his fragile coalition prepare for a showdown over Berlusconi’s future, Letta told business leaders that economic recovery had been hampered for too long by Italy’s “permanent political chaos”.
“Instability has a cost, it would mean that interest rates rise again and we’ll all have to pay more,” he said at a conference in the lakeside town of Cernobbio outside Milan. “Instability has drastic costs, whereas stability pays.”
Key Senate committee on Berlusconi meeting today
Letta, named as head of an unwieldy coalition between his own centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PDL) after last February’s deadlocked elections, said his 130 days in office had not been easy.
“But I reject the caricature which says we have done nothing,” he said, pledging to “break the chains” which have blocked reform of an economy which has been stagnant for more than a decade and deterred foreign investors.
Letta’s comments come a day before a Senate committee meets to begin deliberations which could lead to Berlusconi, who has dominated Italian politics as a politician and media magnate for decades, being expelled from parliament following his conviction for tax fraud last month.
The cross-party panel has become the focal point of a battle over the political future of the 76 year-old billionaire.
The PDL has warned it will pull out of the coalition and bring down the government if centre-left members vote to start proceedings for expulsion although Berlusconi faces at least a year in political exile in any case once his sentence begins.
With memories of the eurozone debt crisis of two years ago still fresh and Italy struggling to emerge from recession, Economy Minister Fabrizio Saccomanni has warned that a coalition breakdown would risk fresh bond market tensions.
President Giorgio Napolitano, who would have to decide whether to call new elections or seek to build a new coalition if the PDL withdraws support, has made it clear he does not want a new vote less than a year after the last election.
In an interview with the conservative Il Tempo newspaper yesterday Gaetano Quagliariello, a PDL minister generally considered a moderate, played down the risk of a crisis.“I don’t think snap elections at this moment would help either the country or Berlusconi,” he said.
Berlusconi’s lawyers have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to strike down the so-called “Severino law” which bans politicians convicted of serious criminal offences from Parliament and the PDL wants the Senate committee to delay any vote while the court decide.
How quickly the committee reaches a decision remains open but the PD has rejected any attempt at what it calls time-wasting and says the law as it stands must apply to everyone.