Berlusconi defiant in face of calls for resignation
Source: Agencies |
February 15, 2011, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said yesterday he had no intention of stepping down and dismissed a weekend demonstration by women across Italy over his part in a sex scandal.
Hundreds of thousands of women took part in rallies on Sunday to defend their dignity and protest over the underage prostitution scandal that has rocked the 74-year-old prime minister's center-right government.
Berlusconi has dismissed the investigation against him as "disgusting and disgraceful," but he has come under pressure from groups including the Vatican and Italy's main business lobby, Confindustria, and polls show his image has suffered.
The billionaire media entrepreneur, who was badly weakened by a split in the ruling PDL party last year, told his Canale 5 network the protests were the work of his political opponents.
"I saw the usual factional forces mobilized against me by a certain section of the left which uses any pretext to beat an adversary whom they can't manage to beat at the polls," he said.
A survey by the Demos polling institute published in the left-leaning La Repubblica daily showed a sharp fall in his popularity ratings, which dropped 4.6 points to 30.4 percent.
By contrast, Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti, widely seen as a possible alternative leader of a center-right government if Berlusconi stepped down, saw a 7.8 percentage point rise to 50.4 percent.
Berlusconi, who has been working hard in recent weeks to shore up his precarious majority in parliament by recruiting deputies from smaller splinter parties, said the government would not resign over the affair.
"There is a lot of confusion but I have very clear ideas. The -interest of the country is to have a stable government which carries on with its program with -determination," he said.
Hundreds of thousands of women took part in rallies on Sunday to defend their dignity and protest over the underage prostitution scandal that has rocked the 74-year-old prime minister's center-right government.
Berlusconi has dismissed the investigation against him as "disgusting and disgraceful," but he has come under pressure from groups including the Vatican and Italy's main business lobby, Confindustria, and polls show his image has suffered.
The billionaire media entrepreneur, who was badly weakened by a split in the ruling PDL party last year, told his Canale 5 network the protests were the work of his political opponents.
"I saw the usual factional forces mobilized against me by a certain section of the left which uses any pretext to beat an adversary whom they can't manage to beat at the polls," he said.
A survey by the Demos polling institute published in the left-leaning La Repubblica daily showed a sharp fall in his popularity ratings, which dropped 4.6 points to 30.4 percent.
By contrast, Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti, widely seen as a possible alternative leader of a center-right government if Berlusconi stepped down, saw a 7.8 percentage point rise to 50.4 percent.
Berlusconi, who has been working hard in recent weeks to shore up his precarious majority in parliament by recruiting deputies from smaller splinter parties, said the government would not resign over the affair.
"There is a lot of confusion but I have very clear ideas. The -interest of the country is to have a stable government which carries on with its program with -determination," he said.
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