The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is proposing to change the constitution by referendum to give him greater powers as a “directly elected president”.
Addressing supporters of his People of Liberty (PdL) party at a rally in Rome, Mr Berlusconi said that he planned a “great, great, great reform” in the remaining three years of his term.
This would include changes to the judiciary, which he claims is biased against him, a cut in the number of MPs and senators and direct elections for a head of state with expanded powers.
The president is currently elected by Parliament, and has limited powers. Mr Berlusconi did not say whether he would be a candidate but the Italian press said that the announcement was consistent with his populist belief that “the people” supported him despite the “lies” spread by “magistrates and the press”.
PdL officials said that more than a million people attended the rally in Rome, staged under the slogan “Love always wins over envy and hatred” to the soundtrack from Star Wars.
However, police put the turnout at 150,000 — fewer than the crowds that attended a centre-left, anti-Berlusconi rally a week previously.
New opinion polls show that Mr Berlusconi’s approval rating has slipped to 44 per cent from 62 per cent when he was elected to his third term a year and a half ago.
Last week the Prime Minister addressed a half-empty hall at an election rally in Naples.
Mr Berlusconi’s standing could suffer another blow if centre-right voters abstain in elections in 13 regions next weekend after the PdL bungled the registration of its candidates in Lazio, the region around Rome. It missed the deadline because a party official went out for a sandwich.
Questions were also raised over the validity of signatures accompanying the PdL list in Mr Berlusconi’s native Lombardy region.
At first the Prime Minister turned on “idiots” in his party but later blamed the Left for “dirty tricks”.
Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, said that Mr Berlusconi was increasingly “nervous” because “he knows the tide is turning against him”.
Renato Mannheimer, Italy’s top pollster, said: “The centre-right electorate is disoriented and has lost confidence in its leaders, whom they see as disorganised.”
Magistrates are investigating Mr Berlusconi for abuse of office after tapped phone conversations indicated that he had interfered to try to block his critics from appearing on talk shows and news bulletins not only on his Mediaset television network but also on programmes of RAI, the public broadcaster.
At the Rome rally, outside the Basilica of St John Lateran, Mr Berlusconi said that “leftist” judges and politicians had concocted “a laughable investigation based on the tapping of my calls.
“Do you want phone taps on everyone and everything? Do you want to be spied on in your own homes?” he asked the crowd — which roared back, “No”.
“We don’t often take to the streets but it was absolutely necessary to defend ourselves from the attacks of the Left and its magistrates,” Mr Berlusconi told his supporters.
“We are here to have our right to vote guaranteed. With you, love and freedom will win.”
Ministers and PdL regional candidates attended the Rome rally. However, Gianfranco Fini, the Speaker of the Lower House and co-founder of the party — who has distanced himself from the Prime Minister and is seen as his most likely challenger — did not take part, saying that his institutional position prevented him from doing so. He is to launch a new movement in May called Generation Italy.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7070477.ece
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