"By slim margin, Berlusconi wins confidence vote in Italy" October 15, 2011|By Rachel Donadio, New York Times
ROME - In his narrowest escape yet, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy barely survived a confidence vote yesterday, saving his government from collapse but effectively preventing it from legislating.
With 316 votes for and 301 votes against, Berlusconi’s center-right coalition won the vote. But it failed to secure a solid majority, making it increasingly difficult for him to pass legislation aimed at protecting Italy from Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.
Had he lost, Berlusconi would have had to resign, marking the end of an 18-year political era in which the billionaire businessman shaped Italian politics in his own image, entwining the country’s fate with his own.
In what the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera called “an atmosphere of interminable agony,’’ analysts said the Berlusconi government was now hanging by a thread and could fall at the next bump in the road - when enough disgruntled lawmakers from within Berlusconi’s coalition calculate that they would be safer jumping off a sinking ship rather than risk drowning....
Yesterday, Berlusconi was saved by loyalists who have said they want the government to limp along rather than fall and potentially be replaced by nonpolitical technocrats with a mandate to carry out those structural changes.
Foreign investors and many of Italy’s business leaders and ruling class are hoping for such a technical government, but lawmakers have resisted such an alternative because it would lead to their losing power.
Yes, they are the people that move dictators in and out of office.
While the political maneuvering continues, the economic storm continues to batter Italy, much to the concern of business leaders and foreign investors....
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