Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has withdrawn his
support for the already-shaky coalition government of the center-left and
center-right led by center-left Premier Enrico Letta. He is the leader of the largest party of the
center-right bloc, the People of Liberty, which has returned to its original
name, Forward Italy.
Berlusconi had required his party’s
cabinet ministers to hand in their resignations. The former Prime Minister objects to efforts
by the center-left to remove him from his seat in the Senate because of a fraud
conviction. The Government faces a
confidence vote in which it must depend on center-right defectors for
support. Berlusconi is pushing to
guarantee an end of the hated property tax and to cancel the increase in the
sales tax. If the five-month-long
Government falls, Italians would soon have to return to the polls for
parliamentary elections, the results of which are uncertain.
The prospect of a fall of the
executive of Italy ,
which has the third largest economy in the European Monetary Union, has rattled financial
markets, as the current Italian Government is considered fiscally responsible. Italy , which has been reducing its
budget deficit, is a bulwark against the contagion of debt and fiscal crisis in
the eurozone.
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