Premier Silvio Berlusconi is expected to resign Saturday after parliament's lower chamber passes European-demanded reforms, ending a 17-year political era and setting in motion a transition aimed at bringing Italy back from the brink of economic crisis. While respected former European commissioner Mario Monti remained the top choice to steer the country out of its debt woes at the head of a transitional government, Berlusconi's allies remained split over who should replace the embattled leader. The opposition did not force a vote of no confidence, but simply abstained on a budget division, letting the law pass, but indicating that the government no longer had a majority. That resignation is expected later Saturday after the Chamber of Deputies approves economic reforms, which include increasing the retirement age starting in 2026 but do nothing to open up Italy's inflexible labor market. The Senate on Friday easily passed the measures, paving the way for Berlusconi to leave office as he promised to do after losing his parliamentary majority Nov. 8. A Cabinet meeting has been scheduled for 6 P.M. (1700 GMT), presumably Berlusconi's last, before he heads to Napolitano's palazzo to tender his resignation. It's an ignoble end for the 75-year-old billionaire media mogul, who came to power for the first time in 1994 using a soccer chant “Go Italy” as the name of his political party and became Italy's longest-serving post-war premier. It would be hard to exaggerate the drastic lapse in the tone of public discourse in these last Berlusconi years. But his three stints as premier were tainted by corruption trials and charges that he used his political power to help his business interests; and his last term has been marred by sex scandals, “bunga bunga” parties and criminal charges In the meantime, all the tensions that make Italy as hard to hold together as the European Community itself – the rich productive north as distant from the poverty-stricken south as Bonn is from Athens, the millionaire employers who declare a pittance and the underpaid, over-taxed employees, the endless localisms, clans and ideological and religious divides – have been stretched to breaking point with the single aim of keeping Silvio in power.
