ROME--Italy's political crisis looks set to worsen when parliament resumes this week after a bitter exchange between Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his rival Gianfranco Fini heightened the prospect of early elections.
Berlusconi said he would appeal to the head of state, President Giorgio Napolitano, to strip Fini of his office as speaker of the lower house following a scathing attack by his estranged former partner in a speech on Sunday.
In a statement issued late on Monday after a meeting with Umberto Bossi, head of his Northern League coalition partners, Berlusconi said Fini's remarks were unacceptable and incompatible with his role as parliamentary speaker. "In the coming days, Prime Minister Berlusconi and Minister Bossi will request a meeting with the President of the Republic to explain the grave situation which poses serious problems to the regular functioning of institutions," the statement said.
Fini hit back later on Tuesday, saying he would remain speaker for the full legislative term and that Berlusconi would not follow through on the appeal to Napolitano since that would reveal constitutional "illiteracy" on his part. "Everyone knows that you can't seek the removal of the speaker because no one has the power to ask for it and no one has the power to make it happen," Fini told Italian television, at one point holding up and reading from the Italian constitution.
He reiterated that his group would still support Berlusconi and that holding elections now would be "irresponsible", but that his group was "absolutely ready" if that were to happen.
The exchange appeared to lessen the likelihood of a compromise between the two former allies, increasing the chances that Italy will go to the polls well before the next scheduled election date in 2013. Berlusconi broke with the co-founder of his People of Freedom party in July after months of increasing friction, leaving the government without a secure majority in parliament after 34 deputies and 10 senators backed Fini.
He has sought to win back some of the rebels but also declared he will hold a confidence motion around a five-point programme of measures including tax and justice reforms, and would resign if he lost. The timing of a confidence motion remains unclear but with the lower house of parliament set to resume on Wednesday after the summer break and the Senate following a week later, a decisive showdown may be approaching.
Fini has been a strong critic of a series of corruption cases that have hit the government but says he does not want to bring it down. On Sunday he said his group would not vote against a confidence motion but would seek to influence the final shape of the programme in parliament.
Berlusconi's own poll ratings have dipped, suggesting he would emerge weaker from an election even if he won. He has been noticeably more reluctant to go to the polls than Bossi, who would be well placed to act as kingmaker. "He'd win it for sure but let's hope we don't have elections because they're always a trauma," Fedele Confalonieri, one of Berlusconi's oldest friends and confidants, said on Tuesday.
In spite of the acrimony between the 73-year-old prime minister and his 58-year-old rival, actual policy differences between the two are not great and the split was caused mainly by Fini's impatience with Berlusconi's tight control of the PDL.
Berlusconi spent much of Tuesday in meetings with party officials, missing the first post-summer cabinet meeting. But whether he will succeed in ousting Fini as speaker is unclear.