Italy’s Prime Minister Enrico Letta gestures during a meeting in Rome, yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta will go before Parliament to chart a possible way out of the country’s political crisis, a statement from the Italian President’s office said later yesterday.

The statement, which came after a meeting between Letta and President Giorgio Napolitano, said the two men had discussed possible solutions after the shock resignation of five ministers belonging to Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right party.

Since the resignations, several members of the centre-right party – including the ministers who stepped down – have given contradictory signals as to whether they support Berlusconi’s desire to hold new elections.

In the statement, Napolitano said the varied declarations of these centre-right politicians had created a “climate of clear uncertainty regarding possible developments”. Hence, the statement said, Letta would go before Parliament to “illustrate his assessment of the situation and what could be done.”

President Giorgio Napolitano had said earlier he would only dissolve Parliament as a last resort but just seven months after the last vote it is not clear if an alternative majority can be found.

Berlusconi, the centre-right former prime minister who was forced from office in November 2011 at the height of the euro zone debt crisis and faces a ban from Parliament for tax fraud, has already launched his election campaign.

Yesterday he attacked Letta’s government and demanded a vote “as quickly as possible”, but said his party would still vote for the 2014 budget, which must be presented next month, on the condition the package of measures “is really useful to Italy”.

Infighting among the left-right coalition government has thwarted efforts to push through reforms Italy needs to emerge from a two-year recession, a 2-trillion-euro public debt and youth unemployment of around 40 per cent. The political paralysis resulting from the government’s collapse will delay those reforms even further in the euro zone’s third largest but most sluggish economy.

Napolitano will only dissolve Parliament as a last resort

Berlusconi said he decided on the shock move on Saturday after the government’s failure to avert a long-programmed hike in sales tax at a Cabinet meeting the day before.

Letta dismissed the motivation as a “huge lie,” saying instead that the media tycoon, who celebrated his 77th birthday yesterday, was acting out of fury at his impending expulsion from Parliament following a conviction for tax fraud.

“The only path to follow is to go with determination towards new elections,” Berlusconi told a party gathering in Naples in a telephone link-up. “I am convinced that a government of taxes is not in the interests of our country.”

“It is tradition for the President to dissolve Parliament early when it isn’t possible to create a majority and a government for the good of the country,” Napolitano told reporters ahead of his meeting with Letta.