Even some opposition MPS’s voted for Mr Berlusconi last Friday.
They consider him the only leader right now that might pull Italy out of the economic soup. His popularity polling was already down below 30% and his party’s position in the parliament very weak.
Italy and the other so-called PIIGS countries (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) have all amassed public debt that exceeds what those economies now produce in one year. (So has the United States. Right now, its national debt is around $15 trillion and its annual GDP about 10% below that.)
Most of that Italian debt was racked up under Mr Berlusconi in the past 10 years when his pro-big-biz policies failed to make the economy grow. (In general big biz adds little value and few jobs. Why Europe and the US and Japan are in the messes they are in.)
Below, you can see the current Rome street reaction which is in effect blaming him for running the economy into the ground and for now make everyone pay. They have a point.
What connection might Mr Berlusconi’s predicament have to the outcome in Perugia? Well, for one thing, it was a small but vital victory for him against the Italian judiciary, with whom he is in the midst of a white hot war. It may well have helped him to survive that vote.
From a very good report by Alessandro Speciale.
Recently, the prime minister’s assault on the courts has taken on renewed urgency. A string of scandals allegedly involving Berlusconi began emerging in the spring of 2009, culminating with the case of Moroccan belly-dancer ‘Ruby the Heart-Stealer’ who has taken part in so-called ‘bunga bunga’ parties at Berlusconi’s villa when she was still underage…So his remaining allies in the parliament usefully leap in.
In one wiretapped conversation, he was heard asking Valter Lavitola — a journalist and fixer who took refuge in Bulgaria after Italian police issued an arrest warrant for him — for a ‘suggestion’ on the appointment of the deputy head of the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s financial police….
“The country is in a critical condition,” warned Emma Marcegaglia, president of Confindustria, the country’s main business association. She urged the government to act “very quickly” or for it to resign….
Despite the urgent nature of the fiscal crisis, Berlusconi has failed to secure a new central bank governor. The outgoing chief of Banca d’Italia, Mario Draghi, will take over the European Central Bank at the end of October. The natural successor for the job, Draghi’s deputy, Fabrizio Saccomanni, has been vetoed by the government’s coalition partners. A weakened Berlusconi stands impotent to overcome the vetoes.
Instead of focusing on the fiscal crisis, his allies in Parliament are fighting on behalf of their leader. They’ve been working to curb wiretapping — to thwart the embarrassing leaks to the press – and to make the statute of limitations even shorter. But his majority is now so fractured that even these projects have not progressed. Instead, the prime minister’s troubles have triggered infighting in his government. Lieutenants and would-be-successors are jostling for the spotlight in the event of his downfall.
In a move described by critics as a desperate attempt to protect his boss, Minister of Justice Francesco Nitto Palma has launched an inquiry on the magistrates investigating Berlusconi in Naples and Bari, to make sure they themselves hadn’t breached the law.MP Rocco Girlanda petitioned the President for an investigation into the Perugia prosecutors, but he did not even get a reply. (The President is no friend of the PM.) Perugia prosecutors are running this national investigation into bribes that Berlusconi’s allies might have taken, and Perugia prosecutors represent perhaps his biggest threat.
Are we suggesting there was a US-Italian conspiracy to spring Sollecito and Knox at the end of the appeal and conveniently make the Perugia prosecutors look fools?
Nah, we really don’t believe in elaborate conspiracies here. But it is amazing what happens at higher levels with just a few winks and nods.
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/pm_berlusconi_survives_italian_vote_of_no_confidence_did_the_perugia_a/
