The power of Fini is eroding
Gianfranco Fini's FLI party loses it's political group status in the senate

Added on February 20, 2011 at 19:33 in Naples
Another FLI member of parliament is leaving Fini's group in the House: Luca Barbareschi.

Article added on February 18, 2011 at 15:58 in Rome  
Italian politics is as dirty as it gets in Western democracies. The leader of Futuro e Libertà per l'Italia (FLI), Gianfranco Fini, a former long-time ally of Premier Silvio Berlusconi, has accused the leader of the government to buy FLI members of the Senate and the House in order to enlarge his majority in the two chambers of the Italian parliament.

The background is the fact that three FLI members have left Fini's party, which will therefore lose its official status as a political group in the Senate. FLI had ten members in the Senate, the minimum to form a political group. The Senators Giuseppe Menardi and Francesco Pontone announced on February 17 to leave FLI, which has now only eight members left in the Upper House.

Menardi said that he realized that Fini had abandoned his electoral base when his 92-year old mother asked him whether Fini was now allying himself with the Communists. Menardi said that he did not support Fini's kind of “antiberlusconismo”.

The former undersecretary in the Ministry of Labor, Roberto Rosso, said on February 17 that he will join Berlusconi's Popolo della Libertà again, leaving FLI behind. He left the FLI group in the Lower House, where FLI still has some 31 members of parliament.

Money buys politics in Italy - and not only there. It is however not clear whether the three politicians mentioned have left FLI because of money offered by Berlusconi (directly or indirectly) or just because they think that they have a better (political) future with Berlusconi.

The power of Fini is eroding. But will this save Berlusconi who will face three female judges on April 6, 2011 regarding “Rubygate”? The prime minister has many conflicts of interests and is a master of shady politics and business practices. The European Union should have suspended Italy's EU membership a long time ago. Instead, a hooker might bring the Italian billionaire down.

[Added on February 19, 2011 at 11:22 Roman time: After reading today's La Repubblica, it looks as if Ruby may be less a prostitute than a confused and abused teenager. She claimed in her interrogation by the attorney to have had sex at several occasions with Cristiano Ronaldo. This seems unlikely because the football star was playing for Manchester United and then Real Madrid. Whatever, a teenager may bring down Italy's most powerful man].

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