Italy: Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi suffered two major blows yesterday, just a month before a general election, as magistrates sought to indict him in a corruption case and his health minister quit over a spying scandal.
Opposition centre-left parties, ahead of the ruling coalition in opinion polls, gleefully leapt on the twin sagas, saying they showed the government was mired in sleaze. But Mr Berlusconi and his allies shook off the allegations and accused the Italian judiciary of meddling in politics.
"Yet again, some magistrates are maliciously abandoning the search of the truth to pursue political ends on the eve of the elections," said Sandro Bondi, chief co-ordinator for Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia (Go Italy) party.
The first setback hit Mr Berlusconi in the morning when Milan prosecutors asked a judge to put the prime minister and David Mills, the husband of British culture secretary Tessa Jowel,l on trial to face corruption charges that both men have denied.
The second blow came hours later, when the normally bullish health minister, Francesco Storace, announced his resignation following allegations this week that he spied on his rivals during a local election last year.
He has denied any wrongdoing, but said he needed to stand down to defend himself more effectively in the investigation, spearheaded by prosecutors in Milan. "What is emerging is that there is something rotten on the right," said centre-left leader Piero Fassino.
Mr Storace, a political heavyweight and member of the rightist National Alliance party, was appointed health minister last year after losing his bid to win re-election as president of the wealthy Lazio region, which includes Rome.
Magistrates believe they have uncovered evidence that Mr Storace sought to spy on his main rivals - Alessandra Mussolini (granddaughter of Italy's wartime dictator), and journalist Piero Marrazzo, who eventually won the ballot for the centre-left.
Sixteen people were arrested earlier this week in connection with the case, including 11 private investigators. They are all believed to have carried out the spying in an operation that has inevitably been compared to the US Watergate affair.
Mr Storace is the second minister to quit Mr Berlusconi's cabinet in the build-up to the general election. Roberto Calderoli was forced to resign as reforms minister last month after he went on television wearing a T-shirt with a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.