Italians debate expelling Silvio Berlusconi from parliament
ITALIAN Prime Minister Enrico Letta warned of the risk of fresh political turmoil yesterday, a day before a Senate committee meets to decide whether to expel the country’s former leader Silvio Berlusconi from parliament.
As the two main partners in his fragile coalition prepare for a showdown over Berlusconi’s future, Letta told business leaders that economic recovery had been hampered for too long by Italy’s “permanent political chaos”.
“Instability has a cost, it would mean that interest rates rise again and we’ll all have to pay more,” he said at a conference in Cernobbio outside Milan.
Letta was named as head of an unwieldy coalition between his own centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PDL) and has been in office 130 days.