Fighting back
October 8, 2009
Reacting to the decision, Berlusconi accused the Constitutional Court of being primarily "left-wing" and said he was determined to stay in power for his five-year mandate. His cabinet ministers have also expressed their continued support for the prime minister.
On Wednesday, the highest Italian court overturned a law granting Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office, arguing that the law violates the principle that all citizens are equal before the law.
The legislation was passed soon after Berlusconi came to power last year. Berlusconi has argued the immunity allowed him to govern without being "distracted" by the judiciary.
"We must govern for five years with or without the law," the billionaire prime minister told reporters outside his Rome office. He added that he had expected the ruling, saying the Constitutional Court was filled with "11 left wing judges."
Berlusconi also accused Italian President Giorgio Napolitano of being biased. "We know what side the president is on," Berlusconi said.
The president’s office was quick to react saying that Napolitano "is on the side of the constitution, and he exercises his duties with absolute impartiality, in a spirit of loyal cooperation with the institutions."
The law also shielded the holders of Italy's three other top political jobs - president and the speakers of the two houses of parliament - from prosecution while in office.
Trials to be reopened?
The law so far protected the 73-year-old politician from potential lawsuits. But that might now change.
"This [ruling] means that at least two trials against him will be automatically reopened. He was untouchable and now becomes touchable again, so he can be weakened by the judiciary," Franco Pavoncello, a political scientist at John Cabot University in Rome told news agency Reuters on Wednesday.
The most high-profile trial suspended as a result of the law was one where the Italian leader is suspected of having paid 600,000 euros ($880,000) to his former tax lawyer, Briton David Mills, in return for false testimony in two trials in the 1990s.
Berlusconi was initially a co-defendant in Mills' trial in Milan earlier this year, but he was struck from the case following the introduction of the immunity law. Mills denied any wrongdoing, like Berlusconi, but was found guilty and sentenced to four and a half years in prison in February.
Another case involves allegations that his Mediaset television empire inflated figures for its purchases of broadcasting rights in order to create slush funds.
The billionaire media mogul and businessman has faced charges including corruption, tax fraud, false accounting and illegally financing political parties since he arrived on the political scene in the mid-1990s.
Ruling piles pressure on embattled premier
The ruling comes at a time when the premier's high approval ratings have been eroded by a series of sex scandals.
It also comes days after thousands of people staged a rally in Rome, demanding press freedom in Italy and accusing Berlusconi of trying to muzzle the press.
Critics accuse the Italian prime minister of trying to control information surrounding allegations he entertained prostitutes at his private residence.
Experts in Italy also worry that the ruling may weaken Berlusconi's government at a time when the country, the third-largest economy in the euro zone, is struggling to emerge from a deep recession.
"Italy is in bad need of reforms to get the economy going, and this makes those reforms even less likely because Berlusconi will be less inclined or able to focus on any reform effort," Tito Boeri, an economist at Milan's Bocconi University, told Reuters.
ai/sp/dpa/AFP/Reuters
Editor: Trinity Hartman