Rome: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday afternoon won a much-awaited vote in parliament, but lost majority support as financial pressure from the Euro Zone debt crisis pummeled Italy.
Berlusconi won 308 votes in favour and none against with one formal abstention but 321 deputies refused to take part in the vote. The absolute majority in Italy’s 630-seat parliament is 316 votes.
The result leaves Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition effectively with no mandate to pass the ambitious reforms needed to rescue Italy’s finances.
Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, said Italy ran a real risk of losing access to financial markets after political uncertainty pushed yields on government bonds toward a red line of 7 percent.
“I ask you, Mr Prime Minister, with all my strength, to finally take account of the situation … and resign,” Bersani said immediately after the vote.
“We have asked him to step aside,” Northern League party leader Umberto Bossi, a long-term close ally of Berlusconi, told reporters.
Global markets were focused on the political crisis playing out in Italy, the third-biggest economy in the eurozone, while European Union ministers held talks in Brussels in which they voiced concern about the situation.
“We’re in the eye of the global storm… Italy needs international credibility,” business daily Il Sole 24 Ore said in an editorial.
In Brussels, Austria warned Italy was too big to bail out, saying it could not rely on “help from outside” because of the size of its economy.
Britain and Sweden meanwhile led calls by non-euro EU members for eurozone countries to move fast with a convincing firewall to stop crisis contagion.
Finland said the Italian government should stop making “empty promises”.
The combination of Italy’s low growth rate and 1.9-trillion euro ($2.6-trillion) debt has fanned investor alarm that it could be the next victim of Europe’s debt crisis even though its deficit is relatively low.
A defiant Berlusconi on Monday dismissed talk of his possible resignation as “baseless” and warned against calls for the creation of a unity government to fight the crisis, saying it would be “the opposite of democracy.”
Although the current political picture in Italy is far from clear, the idea that Berlusconi, a dominant feature in Italian politics for almost two decades, could step down is no longer taboo, including among his supporters.
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