Italy Government Plans to Quit if Parliament Kills Corruption Decree

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government will resign if a controversial decree limiting powers of arrest in corruption cases is kicked out by Italy’s Parliament, the government spokesman said Friday.

The remarks on live television by spokesman Giuliano Ferrara upped the stakes in a battle of wills that has pitted Berlusconi against Italy’s graft-busting magistrates, some of his own coalition partners and a large slice of public opinion.

The Cabinet decree removes bribery and corruption from among offenses for which suspects can be held in jail in preventive detention. Corruption suspects will remain subject to possible house arrest.

The decree law, passed by the Cabinet on Wednesday, is already in force but must be approved by Parliament within 60 days to take a permanent place on the statute books.

Ferrara, who has Cabinet rank, told privately owned Rete Quattro television that the government had staked its image on the decree, which he said Berlusconi regarded as “an act of courage.”

“If the government is slapped in the face on this act of courage and if it fails to obtain the support of the majority (in Parliament), it’s clear that the government will pack its bags,” Ferrara said.

Berlusconi earlier defended the decree after four magistrates in Milan’s elite pool of “Clean Hands” anti-graft investigators announced they intended to seek a transfer to other work in protest.

Berlusconi also slammed the graft-busting magistrates as publicity seekers.

“Preventive detention must go back to being an exceptional measure,” Berlusconi told a stormy news conference.

He said imprisonment had become almost the rule, adding that Italy “had to remain a state of law. It has got to be stopped from becoming a police state.”