Berlusconi wins confidence vote
Bid to bring squabbling coalition into line
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ROME, Italy -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has survived yet another a vote of confidence in his government, successfully gambling on a bid to bring his bickering coalition into line.
The vote -- won by 333 to 148 in the Chamber of Deputies -- was focused on the government's plans for pension reform, which Berlusconi says are vital to kick start Italy's fragile economy.
His government's bill -- bitterly opposed by Italy's trade unions -- provides for raising the retirement age from 57 to 60 from 2008 and is designed to save the country 0.7 percent of gross domestic product every year.
Unions, which have walked out on strike several times on the issue, said they would fight the new law.
"The government should be under no illusions -- the pensions battle is not over," Morena Piccinini of Italy's biggest union CGIL told Reuters.
Piccinini vowed that workers and pensioners would fight to overturn the law that "destroys their rights."
Although the government won the confidence motion, the bill still needs a final vote for it to become law. The vote, widely expected to pass, is expected early Thursday.
Since coming to power in 2001 the Berlusconi government has faced more than 30 confidence votes and had it lost the latest one, it would have been forced to resign.
The government coalition comprises four main members. Berlusconi conservative Forza Italia; the far-right National Alliance; the Northern League, headed by Umberto Bossi, which wants devolution for northern regions; and the centralist Christian Democrat party, the Democratic Union of the Center (UDC).
The crisis engulfing Berlusconi's government was sparked by European elections in June when his Forza Italia party lost ground to its three coalition partners. Buoyed by the result, they began demanding a greater say in policy-making.
The Northern League and the UDC have been at odds over devolution, and have been trading tit-for-tat political blows.
The decision to go for a confidence vote was taken in a crisis meeting of coalition partners after an editorial in La Padania, the newspaper of the Northern League party, said the pensions vote should be put back until after parliament's summer break. They said the devolution plan should be approved first.
That was against the wishes of the country's European affairs minister, Rocco Buttiglione, a UDC member. He had pushed for the pensions reforms to go through before the summer recess to prevent a threatened EU "early warning" over Italy's public deficit.
The League's threat to delay the pensions was seen as a response to the UDC's threats to water down the plan devolving power to the regions.
The UDC opposed that plan, fearing it will deprive its power bases in the poor south of badly needed central government funds.
Analysts see the Berlusconi "back me or sack me" vote as designed to stop individual disgruntled Northern League parliamentarians breaking ranks and embarrassing the government by voting against single articles.
Alessandro Ce, the Northern League whip in the lower house of parliament, earlier told Reuters the party would vote for the government even though the decision to do so was "a painful one" for the party.
Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli, also a Northern League member, said party leaders decided to vote with the government after Berlusconi guaranteed support for League devolution proposals.
Promise
Berlusconi, who said in the past he would not hesitate to use a confidence vote to force the pension law through, said he had promised European Union finance ministers, concerned about Italy's public finances, to get the law in place.
"It was an undertaking to the European Union to approve the pensions reform before the summer break," he told reporters. "It was logical to do what was announced."
"The old structure of our relations is jammed and the new version has not yet taken off. That's the truth," Buttiglione said last week.
"But we must move together again or it's clear that sooner or later we are going to be beaten."
CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley said Berlusconi was always likely to win, with a deal already done -- the rows about federalism and wider economic reforms postponed until the autumn.
Berlusconi has prepared measures to save the state 24 billion euros ($29.17 billion) next year -- necessary to keep Italy's budget deficit below European Union limits.
The government has yet to detail where the savings will come from, and unions are worried. The cuts, along with extra revenue that might result from selling state assets, are worth almost two percent of Italy's GDP.
Berlusconi seems unlikely to be able to fulfil his plans to cut income tax next years by 12.5 billion euros.
