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ROME: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi avoided a potentially embarrassing defeat in parliament on Thursday when deputies voted against allowing the arrest of a former aide to Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti on corruption charges.
Naples magistrates had sought to lift the parliamentary immunity of Marco Milanese, until recently one of Tremonti’s closest aides, who has been accused of corruption and influence-peddling.
A move to allow his immunity to be lifted would not have had any direct effect on the government but it would have been a severe embarrassment and increased uncertainty surrounding the fractious center-right coalition.
The vote came on the same day that Milan magistrates filed a request to charge Berlusconi for leaking transcripts potentially damaging to a political rival to Il Giornale, a newspaper owned by his brother.
With Tremonti absent from the chamber because he had left for a finance ministers’ meeting in Washington, deputies voted in a secret ballot by 312 against 305 to prevent the arrest, a narrower margin than in recent confidence motions.
Already battling a widening prostitution scandal and facing growing criticism over his government’s handling of a financial crisis that now threatens the entire euro zone, Berlusconi has dismissed speculation that he will resign.
Speaking after the vote in parliament, Berlusconi dismissed speculation that he may quit before his term ends in 2013, telling reporters: “We’re going ahead, we are working well.”
But in a sign of the government’s disarray, he expressed bitterness over Tremonti’s absence from the vote. Asked whether he was disappointed that his finance chief was not in the chamber, he replied simply: “Other questions?“
A parliamentary source present at a meeting on the sidelines of the vote told Reuters, Berlusconi described Tremonti’s absence as “immoral.”
Pressure
Thursday’s vote came as Italy came under renewed market pressure with risk premiums on its bonds rising sharply amid growing doubts over the stability of the government and its handling of the financial crisis.
The head of Italy’s main banking federation ABI weighed in, calling on the government to step up promised economic reforms and infrastructure investments.
“We must give a clear signal to the markets that we have understood the gravity of the situation and that we are in a position to face up to it,” ABI President Giuseppe Mussari told Italian radio.
Italy, whose credit rating was cut by Standard and Poor’s this week, is now firmly at the center of the euro zone debt crisis, its borrowing costs close to levels which prompted the European Central Bank to move to prop up its bonds last month.
With one of the world’s highest public debt levels and an economy close to stagnation, the government chaos has contributed heavily to market uncertainty.
On Thursday, the risk premium on Italian 10 year bonds over safer German Bunds stood at more than 400 basis points while yields were at 5.7 percent, just shy of the levels over 6 percent when the ECB began buying Italian bonds.
Berlusconi’s Northern League coalition partners, whose support is necessary for him to remain in power, backed the government in the vote but their support has appeared more and more unstable as the problems for the government have mounted.
Tremonti is not implicated in the allegations against Milanese but he has been badly damaged by the case and has admitted “mistakes” in paying 1,000 euros ($1,370) a week in cash to rent a flat from his former aide.
Once seen as the guarantor of Italy’s financial stability, he has appeared increasingly isolated and at odds with Berlusconi and other members of the cabinet.
In a sign of the difficulties facing the government, ministers approved a cut in Italy’s official growth forecasts to 0.7 percent in 2011 and 0.6 percent in 2012 from previous forecasts of 1.1 percent and 1.3 percent respectively.
The projections follow the approval of a 60 billion euro austerity package in parliament this month, which is intended to balance the budget by 2013.
