INTERVIEW-Opposition must revive anti-Berlusconi alliance
03 Nov 2009 17:30:15 GMT Source: Reuters
* Courts will not convict Berlusconi, opponent says * Alliance necessary to topple prime minister By Daniel Flynn and Massimiliano Di Giorgio ROME, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Italy's courts will never convict Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on corruption charges and opposition parties need to revive an alliance to unseat him, the leader of one of Italy's main opposition groups told Reuters. Antonio Di Pietro, a former anti-corruption prosecutor and founder of the Italy of Values party, said judicial reforms proposed by the conservative government were just moves to block two trials against Berlusconi, whose immunity from prosecution was overturned by the Constitutional Court last month. Berlusconi says charges of bribery and false accounting in the acquisition of TV rights by his Mediaset broadcasting group are politically motivated. He says the reform is needed to speed up and depoliticise Italy's creaking judicial system. Di Pietro, a prosecutor in the Clean Hands corruption investigations of the early 1990s that tore apart Italy's Cold War political system, said the prime minister would find ways to avoid conviction, as he had done with past trials where statutes of limitations expired. "The court cases will never succeed because Berlusconi, who entered politics to block cases against him, will always invent a way to prevent a final verdict," Di Pietro said in an interview on Tuesday. The only way to unseat Berlusconi was politics, said Di Pietro, who held talks last week with the newly elected head of the main opposition Democratic Party, Pier Luigi Bersani, to revive a political alliance. The pair were cabinet colleagues in Romano Prodi's centre-left government that collapsed in 2008. The PD and IDV contested the election that year in coalition, polling about 38 percent. But the alliance was broken by the PD's interim leader, Dario Franceschini, who had taken office in February after a regional electoral defeat. "An alliance is necessary today to stop Berlusconi and tomorrow to create an alternative," said Di Pietro, whose party is running at about 10 percent in opinion polls. "Italy needs a bipolar political system." PROTEST MAY TURN VIOLENT With Italy suffering its worst recession of the post-war period and the economy due to contract by 5 percent this year, Di Pietro said he was being approached by Italians angry at rising unemployment and the cost of living. "In the coming months, if not in the coming weeks, you will see escalating protests on the streets," said Di Pietro. "I fear that unfortunately this rising discontent will result in an escalation of violence and the government will be to blame because it's behaving like Nero, fiddling as Rome burns." While a general strike last month over job losses disrupted some transport and schooling services, there have been few signs in Italy so far of the violent protests seen in other European countries during the global financial crisis. The country has witnessed months of political scandals which began with coverage of Berlusconi's relationship with a teenage model that prompted his wife to demand a divorce in May and most recently claimed the scalp of an opposition governor over reports he had paid for sex with a transvestite prostitute. Di Pietro said the scandals would continue as pro-Berlusconi media waged war on his detractors. The 73-year-old premier, who controls three of Italy's four national private TV channels, says he does not interfere with their editorial freedom. "It's a bit like the mafia. A mafia don never needs to order a killing or a blackmail. It's enough for him to say: 'I don't like that person', and someone else will do it," said Di Pietro. (Writing by Daniel Flynn; editing by Stephen Brown)
