Silvio Berlusconi expelled from Italian parliament

The Italian Senate on Wednesday expelled three-time ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconifrom Parliament over his tax fraud conviction, ending, for now, his two-decade legislative run but not his political career.

Berlusconi has warned that the unprecedented move would embarrass Italy internationally. He maintained his defiance as the Senate voted, declaring on Wednesday a "day of mourning for democracy" before thousands of cheering, flag-waving supporters outside his Roman palazzo.

Even though Berlusconi won't hold a seat in Parliament, he is expected to remain influential in Italian politics. He has relaunched his Forza Italia party and he still commands millions of loyal supporters.

While his lawyers chart possible legal challenges and his allies move into Italy's opposition, Berlusconi's fans massed in front of his Roman palazzo for a rally that analysts said was essentially the start of Italy's next electoral campaign.

"Today they are toasting because they can take an adversary, they say a friend, in front of the executioner's squad," Berlusconi said. "It is the day they have been waiting for for 20 years."

He pledged to continue his role as a political leader, citing other figures not in Parliament, namely the founder of the Five Star Movement, Beppe Grillo, and Matteo Renzi of the Democratic Party, tipped by many as a future premier candidate.

"Also, from outside the Parliament, we can continue to fight for our liberty," he said.

Supporters were treated to a video montage of Berlusconi's greatest political hits from a career that began in 1994 when he first came into power with a political party named for a soccer chant "Go Italy." He said that even if he's no longer a senator, he will continue to be a force to reckon with.

"For us he will always be there," said Marilda Antonello as she held a banner reading "The law is not equal for everyone. Sick justice."

"He is our only leader. He is the only man who can take Italy forward," she said.

The Senate vote on whether to remove Berlusconi from the chamber stems from a 2012 law that bans anyone sentenced to more than two years in prison from holding or running for public office for six years. His lawyers claim the law is unconstitutional and have questioned why the rush to expel him while legal challenges are still pending.

Italy's high court on August 1 upheld Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction and four-year prison term stemming from his Mediaset empire's purchase of television rights to US films.

The prison term was reduced automatically to one year under a general amnesty; he will serve his time either under house arrest or through public service.

Berlusconi claims he didn't receive a fair trial and that the judges were biased and out to "eliminate" him from public office. His lawyers have also charged that the 2012 law is unconstitutional and can't be applied retroactively to crimes allegedly committed before it was passed.

They have taken their challenge to the European Court of Human Rights — even though it turns out Berlusconi didn't make much of his Senate role to begin with: Private TV La7 reported this week that Berlusconi attended just one Senate session since April's elections. And that was when he did an about-face and backed the government in a confidence vote after threatening to bring it down.

Nevertheless, Berlusconi made a last-ditch bid to save his seat this week, sending a letter to opposition senators warning them that kicking a three-time premier out of public office would tarnish Italy's image abroad and weigh on their consciences, "a responsibility that in the future will shame you in front of your children, your electors and all Italians."

Berlusconi remains head of his relaunched Forza Italia party, which on Tuesday officially withdrew its support of the government of Premier Enrico Letta and is now in the opposition.

Despite the switch, Letta's government comfortably survived a confidence vote early Wednesday and passed the annual budget. He survived because Berlusconi's one-time political heir, Angelino Alfano, split from his mentor earlier this month and formed his own new center-right party that remains loyal to Letta.

Analysts said they expected Letta's government — a hybrid of his Democratic Party and Alfano's New Center-Right — would continue in the short term.

The opposition, however, now includes two strong leaders: Berlusconi and Grillo, whose populist Five Star Movement encapsulates the discontent many Italians feel with the country's byzantine politics.

"Berlusconi by himself doesn't have the strength to bring down Letta's government, but he's going to make it more difficult for the Democratic Party to stay in the majority," said Giovanni Orsina, deputy director of the school of government at Rome's LUISS University. "I think Silvio Berlusconi can do some damage to this government."

James Walston, a professor of international relations at the American University of Rome, said the vote and rally essentially mark the start to a new electoral campaign in which Berlusconi won't be running for office but will be very much a protagonist as the head of a party.

"Berlusconi over the last few days has been conducting a very strident campaign," Walston said, referring to his letter to the opposition senators. "This is Berlusconi laying down part of his program for what he hopes is going to be elections very shortly."

Meanwhile, Berlusconi still faces other legal problems, including a seven-year prison term and lifetime ban from holding public office for his conviction of paying an underage prostitute for sex at his infamous "bunga bunga" parties and trying to cover it up. He has professed his innocence and plans to appeal.

More: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Silvio-Berlusconi-expelled-from-Italian-parliament/articleshow/26484600.cms

Berlusconi faces expulsion from Parliament over tax fraud sentence

Italian centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi faces one of the heaviest blows of his 20-year political career on Wednesday when the Senate votes on stripping him of his seat in Parliament over a conviction for tax fraud.

The vote will be the culmination of months of political wrangling and is almost certain to lead to Berlusconi's expulsion from the upper house, opening an uncertain new phase for one of Italy's most divisive political figures.

The 77-year-old media billionaire, who has dominated politics for two decades, has already pulled his party out of Prime Minister Enrico Letta's ruling coalition after seven months in government, accusing leftwing opponents of mounting a "coup d'etat" to eliminate him.

The Senate is due to vote at around 7.00 pm (1800 GMT) to declare Berlusconi ineligible for Parliament after he was convicted of masterminding a complex system of illegally inflated invoices to cut the tax bill for his Mediaset television empire.

The court sentenced him to four years in jail, commuted to a year likely to be spent performing community service, and he was also banned from holding public office for two years, preventing any immediate return to government.

Under a law passed with Berlusconi's support last year, politicians convicted of serious criminal offences are ineligible for Parliament, but his expulsion must first be confirmed by a full vote in the Senate.

Both Letta's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and former comedian Beppe Grillo's anti-establishment 5-Star Movement have declared they will vote against Berlusconi, making it virtually certain that he will be expelled.

His removal will have little immediate impact on Letta's government, which survived a confidence vote on the 2014 budget on Tuesday with the help of a group of some 30 centre-right senators who broke away from Berlusconi's party this month.

But it will heighten the political tensions that have hampered any serious reforms to Italy's stagnant economy, struggling with youth unemployment of more than 40 percent and stuck in a recession that has lasted more than two years.

More: http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/berlusconi-faces-expulsion-from-parliament-over-tax-fraud-sentence_892643.html

Dealing a Blow to Berlusconi, an Italian Senate Panel Recommends His Expulsion

A special panel of the Italian Senate on Friday voted to strip Silvio Berlusconi of his current seat, a humiliating blow for a man who has dominated Italy for the past two decades but whose political career is now very much in jeopardy.

The expulsion vote against Mr. Berlusconi, based on his recent tax fraud conviction, was his second setback of the week, after his failed attempt to bring down the country’s fragile coalition government. The full Senate will probably decide by the end of the month whether to expel Mr. Berlusconi, though a vote against him is now considered very likely.

Mr. Berlusconi, 77, a former prime minister and billionaire media mogul, who once wielded power with a swagger, had fought for weeks to prevent the expulsion vote. Many analysts say his effort to topple the government was partly intended to interrupt or delay the proceedings against him in the Senate. But a mutiny of his center-right supporters forced him to make a public reversal and support the government in a parliamentary confidence vote.

“It’s a loss on all fronts for a man who is at the end of his career,” said Stefano Folli, a political commentator for the daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. “Now his twilight will be swifter. This clearly has a highly political and symbolic value.”

Mr. Berlusconi, who has spent most of the past two months out of the public eye, must now prepare to begin serving a one-year sentence on Oct. 15, most likely under house arrest, for the tax fraud conviction. He is also awaiting a ruling from a court in Milan, which will decide how many years he will be barred from seeking public office, based on the same conviction.

His legal troubles have shaken the center-right political movement he has led for the past two decades. Analysts say Mr. Berlusconi, if often controversial, has nonetheless been the undisputed central figure who has shaped his party. But with his career in trouble, several longtime protégés and followers abandoned him before the confidence vote and even spoke of splitting his People of Freedom party.

His loyalists have fought fiercely to derail the expulsion proceedings, arguing that the move is unconstitutional. Lucio Malan, a senator with Mr. Berlusconi’s party and a member of the special panel, described Friday’s vote as “very grave” and promised that the center-right would make its arguments before the full Senate.

But members of the center-left Democratic Party, the longtime opponents of Mr. Berlusconi, framed Friday’s vote as an example of rule of law.

“This is an instrument that protects Parliament and prevents people convicted for serious crimes from sitting in Parliament,” Felice Casson, a Democratic Party senator, said during an interview on Italian television. “In my opinion, we decided in a serene way, and we applied the law.”

For his part, Mr. Berlusconi has seemed erratic in recent weeks. Party insiders say he fears that Italy’s magistrates, long his adversaries, will now have the leeway to bring a fusillade of new investigations against him and could even put him in jail. As a senator, Mr. Berlusconi enjoys certain immunities from prosecution or detention.

As yet, public attitudes are difficult to gauge. Pro-Berlusconi posters began appearing in Rome on Friday as the Senate panel deliberated. Yet a recent survey showed that his People of Freedom party, recently leading in national polls, has since slipped to second place, behind the Democratic Party.

“This week has marked the almost complete decline for Mr. Berlusconi,” Mr. Folli said.

Credits: nytimes

Italy boat sinking: Hundreds feared dead off Lampedusa

At least 130 African migrants have died and many more are missing after a boat carrying them to Europe sank off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.

A total of 103 bodies have been recovered and more have been found inside the wreck, coast guards say.

Passengers reportedly threw themselves into the sea when a fire broke out on board. More than 150 of the migrants have been rescued.

Most of those on board were from Eritrea and Somalia, said the UN.

The boat was believed to have been carrying up to 500 people at the time and some 200 of them are unaccounted for.

Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said the ship had come from Misrata in Libya and began taking on water when its motor stopped working.

It is thought that some of those on board set fire to a piece of material to try to attract the attention of passing ships, only to have the fire spread to the rest of the boat.

Simona Moscarelli, a spokeswoman from the International Organization for Migration in Rome, told the BBC that in order to escape the fire, "the migrants moved, all of them, to one side of the boat which capsized".

She estimated that only six of about 100 women on board survived, adding that most of the migrants were unable to swim.

"Only the strongest survived," she said.

It is one of the worst such disasters to occur off the Italian coast in recent years; Prime Minister Enrico Letta tweeted that it was "an immense tragedy". The government has declared a day of national mourning on Friday.

"There is no miraculous solution to the migrant exodus issue," said Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino. "If there were we would have found it and put it into action."

In a separate incident on Thursday, local media reported that around 200 migrants were escorted to the port of Syracuse on the island of Sicily, when their vessel encountered difficulties five miles off the coast.

Earlier this week, 13 migrants drowned while trying to reach Sicily.

'Continuous horror'

Footage from Lampedusa showed bodies being laid out on the dockside.

The mayor, Giusi Nicolini, described the scene as a "continuous horror".

"It's horrific, like a cemetery, they are still bringing them out," she said, according to Reuters.

More than 140 people have been rescued from the shipwreck, officials say

The vessel reportedly capsized after a fire on board

There are believed to have been around 500 people on board the vessel

The bodies of the victims were lined up at Lampedusa dockside

The boat went down a few hundred metres from the shore of the island and divers said they found 40 bodies in and around the sunken boat on the sea bed.

Mr Alfano said at least three children and two pregnant women were among the dead. Local media reported that a suspected people smuggler had been arrested.

One Eritrean woman who had been placed among the bodies recovered from the sea was later found to be breathing, Italian media said. She was taken to hospital in Sicily.

Pope Francis sent a Twitter message calling for prayers for the "victims of the tragic shipwreck off Lampedusa". In July he visited the island and condemned the "global indifference" to the plight of migrants trying to arrive there.

In a later audience at the Vatican, he said: "The word is disgrace: This is disgrace!"

In a statement UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres commended the swift action taken by the Italian coast guard to save lives.

Mr Guterres also expressed "dismay at the rising global phenomenon of migrants and people fleeing conflict or persecution and perishing at sea".

At this time of year, when the Mediterranean tends to be calmer, vessels carrying migrants from Africa and the Middle East land on Italy's southern shores almost every day, the BBC's Alan Johnston reports from Rome.

But often the vessels are overcrowded and are not seaworthy.

The UN said that in recent months most migrants attempting the crossing were fleeing the conflicts in Syria and the Horn of Africa, rather than coming from sub-Saharan Africa.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that more than 1,500 people drowned or went missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe in 2011, making it the "most deadly stretch of water for refugees and migrants".

The UN also said that almost 500 people were reported dead or missing at sea during 2012 in attempts to reach Europe.

The number of those arriving by sea to Italy this year until 30 September stood at 30,100, according to the UN.

"A disgrace": Pope on boat tragedy

The main nationalities of those arriving were Syrian (7,500), Eritrean (7,500) and Somali (3,000).

On Wednesday a draft report from human rights body the Council of Europe said that Italy was "ill-prepared for a new surge of mixed migration on its coasts".

Italy's system for receiving and processing migrants and asylum seekers was not fit for purpose, a council committee on immigration said.

Italy president considers options after cabinet collapse

Italy's president is considering ways out of an acute political crisis after ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi's ministers left the coalition government.

Giorgio Napolitano hinted that he would try to oversee the formation of a new coalition without calling elections.

This follows weeks of worsening ties between Berlusconi's party and PM Enrico Letta's centre-left grouping.

Berlusconi had already threatened to withdraw his ministers if he was expelled from the Senate for tax fraud.

The current coalition government was put together after inconclusive elections in February, and the latest developments cast a further shadow over Italy's struggling economy, the eurozone's third-largest.

It is feared that the crisis could hamper efforts to enact badly-needed reforms to tackle Italy's economic problems, including debt, recession and high youth unemployment.

The International Monetary Fund has warned that coalition tensions represent a risk to the Italian economy.

'Grave violation'

Speaking on Saturday, President Napolitano called for political continuity in the country.

"We need a parliament that discusses and works, not that breaks up every now and then," he said.

"We do not need continuous election campaigns, we need continuity of the government's actions, decisions and its measures to resolve the problems of this country."

Italy is now in very uncertain political terrain, and at times like this its head of state becomes a hugely important figure, the BBC's Alan Johnston in Rome reports.

Later on Sunday, Mr Napolitano is expected to meet Mr Letta, and their talks will be closely watched for the first indications as to how this crisis will play out, our correspondent says.

Mr Letta, of the centre-left Democratic Party, warned late on Friday that he would quit unless his coalition cabinet won a confidence vote due next week.

But Berlusconi pre-empted that, describing Mr Letta's comments as "unacceptable". He later said all five ministers of his People of Freedom (PDL) party were resigning.

The PDL is objecting to a planned increase in sales tax, which is part of wider government policy to reduce big public debts.

Interior Minister and PDL Secretary Angelino Alfano accused Mr Letta of "a grave violation of the pacts that this government is founded on".

But the prime minister responded angrily to the resignations, accusing the PDL leader of telling Italians a "huge lie" in using the sales tax as an alibi for his own personal concerns.

"In parliament, everyone will have to assume responsibility for their actions before the nation."

Berlusconi's legal problems are seen as a cause of much of the tension inside the coalition.

A committee of the Senate decides next week if he should be expelled after the Supreme Court recently upheld his conviction for tax fraud.

It was his first conviction to be confirmed on appeal in two decades of fighting legal cases.

Berlusconi was sentenced to a year in jail, but is expected to serve house arrest or community service because of his age.