ITALY (4)

Italy went in and out of a crisis today. The crisis was caused when Silvio Berlusconi decided to order his party's five Ministers in the grand coalition Government of Prime Minister Enrico Letta to resign. Various reasons were put forward for this, but the real one was that Mr. Berlusconi is about to be thrown out of the Senate after he lost his final appeal in August against a criminal conviction for tax fraud.

However, Mr Berlusconi miscalculated. Buoyed by rumours that the Ministers in question were not as loyal to Mr. Berlusconi as he thought, Mr. Letta refused to accept the resignations and called for a vote of confidence in the Government. By the time the vote came round this evening, Mr. Berlusconi had himself worked out that he didn't have the control over his party that he thought he had. Bowing to the inevitable, he then executed a turnaround and said that his party would support the Government after all.

A number of things flow from this event. But the primary one is the weakening of Mr. Berlusconi, which makes it more likely that he will in fact be thrown out of the Senate.The biggest hindrance to Italy's beginning to deal with its huge economic and political problems has been Mr. Berlusconi, who has used the political process to protect himself from various lawsuits rather than sort out the country he purported to lead. If Mr. Berlusconi were finally to disappear from politics, then there is chance that Italy will be able to move forward.  

Walter Blotscher