NORTHERN LEAGUE leader senator Umberto Bossi has issued a “penultimatum” to embattled prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, threatening to withdraw his party’s crucial support from the centre-right government.
At his party’s annual gathering yesterday in Pontida, Lombardy, Mr Bossi said: “Berlusconi, don’t take anything for granted. It could be that the league will call a halt . . . Your leadership at the next elections will be up for discussion if our requests are not approved. It all depends on what choices are made.”
Although the Northern League leader stopped well short of actually withdrawing from the Berlusconi government, the nature of his ultimatum would suggest that such a withdrawal remains a distinct possibility, perhaps in the late autumn.
Among the items on Mr Bossi’s list were: reduction of household electricity bills within 30 days; reduction of the “cost” of politics, with particular reference to state cars; reduction of the number of parliamentarians by 50 per cent; taxation reform; the transfer of four government ministries from Rome to Monza and Milan in the north; and the relaxation of restrictions on local authority spending.
Although Mr Bossi, who still shows the effects of a stroke he suffered in 2004, seemed at times tired and at one moment lost the thread of his discourse, his speech was enthusiastically received by the estimated 50,000-strong crowd.
When he cautioned against going to an immediate general election, arguing that in the current climate, the centre-left would win, his observations met with a howl of disapproval at the mention of the “centre left”.
Mr Bossi’s reluctance to go to an early election is linked to the fact that in the last month the centre- right (in particular the Northern League) has suffered three emphatic political reverses in both local elections and a nationwide referendum. While Mr Bossi publicly blames global recession and consequent public spending cuts for the government coalition’s current unpopularity, many Northern League supporters have clearly been alienated by the prime minister’s two-year involvement in a series of sex scandals.
Faced with a growing anti-Berlusconi discontent among the faithful, Mr Bossi had to work hard yesterday to convince his supporters that he had not lost his way.
The other important speaker at yesterday’s meeting was minister of the interior and long-time Northern League activist Roberto Maroni. He, too, made some difficult requests of his own government, calling for an end to hostilities in Libya as the only secure way to stop the influx of boat people from north Africa to Italy.