ITALIAN PRIME minister Silvio Berlusconi yesterday gave his most categorical commitment to date that he will not be running for the office of either prime minister or president when the current legislature finishes in 2013.
In an interview with independent daily La Repubblica, normally highly critical of the prime minister, 74-year-old Mr Berlusconi sounded unusually downbeat: "I am absolutely not going to [run in the next general election in 2013]. The centre-right's candidate for prime minister will be [justice minister Alfonso] Alfano. If it was up to me, I would leave now . . . "
Recent months have been especially difficult for the prime minister. He has not only found himself in court on a series of corruption and underage sex charges, but also, and arguably more importantly, this spring he met with emphatic electoral defeats in both local elections and a referendum.
In an apparent acknowledgement of this difficult moment, the prime minister suggested both he and his longtime centre-right ally, Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, would soon be replaced by “the new generations”. The prime minister said his own People of Freedom party had already picked its next leader, Mr Alfano, elected party secretary with a unanimous vote last week. The Northern League, however, had yet to find a worthy successor to Mr Bossi, he said.
For some time now, political commentators have speculated that Mr Berlusconi’s next political target would be to have himself elected (by parliament) as state president, in succession to President Napolitano, whose term of office also ends in 2013. Mr Berlusconi denied such speculation, saying he expected his long-time aide and cabinet under-secretary Gianni Letta to be the next president: “He [Letta] is the most suitable candidate. He is a terrific person, a good person and someone who has very good relations with the centre-left – he’ll get their votes too”. Mr Berlusconi also downplayed tensions with his finance minister Giulio Tremonti, suggesting the minister had presented his current stiff €47 billion austerity package more with an eye to “international markets” than the electorate, adding: “I always tell him [Tremonti] that in politics, the real turnover is made up of votes and consensus. So even if the main items remain, we’ll still change the budget in parliament.”
Speculation that the finance minister might resign as a result of tensions with Mr Berlusconi prompted a run on Italian government bonds yesterday. They reached a nine-year high amid worries about credit default contagion.
Two months ago, in a briefing with members of the foreign press, Mr Berlusconi had indicated his desire to resign. Within hours of that meeting, however, his senior spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti had branded his comments as merely a “hypothesis”. Are yesterday’s statements any different?
Opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani was sceptical, saying: “It’s hard to believe him when he speaks about tomorrow, let alone the future . . . I get the impression that Berlusconi has lost all credibility with Italians.”