Berlusconi Loses Majority After Ally Asks Him to Resign

New York Times ^ | November 8, 2011 | ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

[Pan_Yan]

ROME — Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy won a budget vote in Parliament on Tuesday but the tally showed that he no longer has the support of the majority, a huge humiliation that raised the pressure on him to resign in the face of an escalating debt crisis that has hobbled Greece, threatens Italy and could infect the rest of Europe.

The budget vote came hours after Umberto Bossi, a key ally in Mr. Berlusconi’s center-right coalition, publicly asked him to step aside for the sake of the country, the euro zone’s third-largest economy and a new epicenter of a crisis that has raised investor anxiety in markets around the world.

Mr. Bossi asked the prime minister to relinquish his post in favor of Angelino Alfano, the secretary of Mr. Berlusconi’s Peoples of Liberty Party.

Mr. Berlusconi’s coalition received 308 votes in favor of passing the bill, but 321 lawmakers did not vote — a clear sign that “Mr. Berlusconi no longer has a majority,” said Pier Luigi Bersani, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party. He also called on the prime minister to immediately hand in his resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano.

“Let the president find a solution, we will do our part,” Mr. Bersani said.

Expressing alarm about Italy’s rapidly rising borrowing costs, a reflection of investor fears over the country’s economic future, he said: “We all know that Italy runs the real risk of not being able to access the financial markets in the next few days.”

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Maybe Italy needs a new Mussolini to get things on the right track once again? Its time for Italy to be great again.