Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Berlusconi Trying to
Stage Comeback in
The ANNOTICO
Report
Berlusconi Trying to Stage Comeback in Italy
International Herald Tribune
By Ian Fisher
Monday, November 19, 2007
ROME: With his customary brio, former Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi confirmed Monday that he was forming a new political party to propel
himself back to power, vowing to go forward without his allies on the
center-right, who are growing exhausted with him.
Impatient that the fragile and unpopular government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi remains standing, Berlusconi appeared before
reporters here Monday announcing that he had collected eight million signatures
from Italians who want new elections.
"We all have the responsibility not to waste these millions of
signatures," Berlusconi, 71, Italy's richest man, said at a hastily called
news conference that, with blue balloons and giant video screens outside, felt
more like the start of a well-financed electoral campaign. "This would be
fatal."
Despite his determined optimism, Berlusconi's announcement seemed to come at a
low point for him politically, and it thus seemed uncertain how popular his new
movement might be. To start, his political allies, who were crucial to keeping
him in power during his five years as prime minister, have defected and refused
to support his new party.
"It's not even worth talking about," said Gianfranco Fini, leader of the National Alliance and a longtime ally
who has launched bitter public attacks on Berlusconi over the last week.
"Propaganda," said Pierferdinando Casini, head of a Christian Democratic grouping.
Fini, Berlusconi's foreign minister, has been
particularly critical about what he called Berlusconi's failed strategy in
forcing new elections. Last week, Prodi survived a
bruising budget vote in the Senate, despite Berlusconi's daily predictions that
the government would fall and elections could be called immediately.
"Let's begin to reflect on our errors so we don't repeat them," Fini said in an interview over the weekend with La Repubblica. "Let's stop saying, 'Sooner or later Prodi will fall and we will win again without doing
anything constructive.' Let's begin to put questions to ourselves: Why did we
lose the last elections?"
Fini and other center-right politicians have instead
been urging negotiations with the center-left on a new electoral law -
something that Berlusconi had refused to consider.
Berlusconi's government had pushed the current law through Parliament just
before the elections last year - and it is largely blamed, even now on the
right, for not allowing a wide enough majority for any side, left or right, to
govern effectively.
On Monday, Berlusconi demonstrated the political dexterity he is famous for,
both repudiating his own electoral law and declaring a willingness to discuss a
new one even with Prodi's government.
Specifically, he said he would discuss a proportional electoral system that
might result in a "grand coalition" of the center, like in
"To govern a country this way is very difficult," he said.
Several converging forces seemed to lead to Berlusconi's decision to launch a
new party, to be called either the Party of Freedom or the People of Freedom.
While he lost the elections last year, the margin was narrow and he has
maintained a good deal of personal popularity, which he apparently believes
could lead him again to the prime minister's office. Renato Mannheimer,
a pollster, said that Berlusconi and his allies were favored by 27 percent to
29 percent of the voters, though he cautioned that the polls were taken before
Berlusconi's allies began to flee.
The only other grouping that polls closely, he said, is
the newly formed Democratic Party, formed by the fusion of two center-left
parties and led by
Berlusconi's call for a new party that leans toward the right, but attracts
centrist elements like Christian Democrats, appears aimed at creating a
rival. But Berlusconi is also facing much internal pressure from younger
leaders like Fini and Casini,
who are frustrated at Berlusconi's long and idiosyncratic domination of the
right.
"He is putting a kind of lid on this bottle, but the bottle is full of
gas," said Giuseppe Sacco, a political science professor at the Free
University of Rome. "It is fermenting very much."
Berlusconi first announced the new party on Sunday in northern
Prodi said he was unperturbed.
"Despite Berlusconi's overwhelming media campaign," he said Monday,
"my government is going forward."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/19/europe/italy.php
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