The center-right party People of Freedom (PdL) of the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has caused frictions in the Italian Senate on Thursday after it refrained from giving a vote of confidence in Parliament to the technocratic governement led by Mario Monti.
The decree providing for measures to stimulate investment in infrastructure and modernizing schools, obtained a relative majority in the Senate, not an absolute majority, as expected. Most senators abstained from voting or were absent.
Financial markets immediately reacted negatively: the Milan Stock Exchange has fallen 1.5% at noon, while the benchmark between Italian and German bond price rose to 320, while Monday was, for the first time this year, under 300.
Anna Finocchiaro, leader of the Democratic Party (PD, center-left) in the Senate, described the decision of PdL as a “fact of enormous political significance” before the vote on the budget. She accused PdL of “causing the lack of strategy of the government, inconsistency and indecision,” referring to the possible return of Berlusconi on the political scene.
At the end of a party meeting held on Wednesday, Berlusconi suggested that he might run again in legislative elections in the spring of 2013.
“I am assailed by numerous requests to return to the forefront,”
Berlusconi said in a statement.
“The situation is worse now than one year ago, when I left the government, today Italy is on the brink of collapse, I can not allow that,”
he added.
Apart from a few close people that welcomed the idea of Berlusconi heading, for the fifth time, the Italian government, his statements were sharply criticized, especially by the Economic Development Minister Corrado Passera. “All that the world and our partners could imagine, that we return to the past is not a good thing for Italy. We must give the feeling that we are going forward,” Passera said Thursday morning during a TV show.
Technocrat Prime Minister Mario Monti, a former European commissioner, replaced Berlusconi in November 2011, when he lost the absolute majority in parliament amid eurozone crisis, which threatened to seriously affect Italy’s economy.
Mario Monti’s cabinet is supported by a large but mixed majority, with the support of the main center-right and center-left parties, and former Christian Democrats (center).
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