A Roman Rally Against ‘Protections’ for Premier

More than 100,000 people marched behind Italy’s re-energized center-left opposition leaders Saturday to denounce government measures aimed at shielding Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from criminal prosecution and the loss of his multibillion-dollar business empire.

The festive, peaceful demonstration was the biggest against the country’s richest individual since his center-right coalition swept to victory last May and bigger than any rally of the election campaign that preceded it.

Protesters mocked the 65-year-old tycoon, whose effigy floated above the crowd in a Napoleon outfit. They wore Pinocchio noses and passed around make-believe bank notes bearing the image of a sneering Berlusconi and the slogan: “Italy is not for sale. I’m going to keep it all for myself.”

Berlusconi has unsettled many Italians in recent months by using his coalition’s parliamentary majority to push through laws, over loud but impotent opposition protests, that protect his personal and business interests.

One law makes it harder for prosecutors to use evidence from foreign countries in criminal cases in Italy; after that bill passed Parliament, defense lawyers moved to block Swiss bank evidence that Berlusconi had bribed a judge to approve a business acquisition.

But the most highly charged move is a government bill to regulate conflicts of interest in a way that would allow Berlusconi to keep control of the Fininvest holding company while running the government. Fininvest owns Italy’s major private television networks, a major publishing house, a film production company, a financial services company and the AC Milan soccer team.

The tycoon promised after taking office to resolve this evident conflict of interest. But the bill, which passed the lower house of Parliament last week and is headed for the Senate, bars only managers of businesses, not owners such as Berlusconi, from holding public office.

Debate nearly brought rival lawmakers to blows. Rather than stay and vote against it, Francesco Rutelli, the Olive Tree coalition leader who lost the election to Berlusconi, led opposition lawmakers out of the Parliament chamber and took their cause to the streets.

Anti-government protests led by citizens groups have been building for more than a week, but they have also criticized centrist and leftist party leaders for fighting more among themselves than against Berlusconi.

Rutelli told a rally at the end of Saturday’s march that the protests were a “wake-up call for me.”

“Today, with renewed force, begins a new path forward for all of us,” he told the crowd in the piazza outside St. John Lateran Basilica. “The right divides. The Olive coalition wants to unite Italy.”

Protest organizers used a powerful symbol to claim that they are just as patriotic as Berlusconi is. Giovanni Bachelet, whose father was a prominent judge killed by Red Brigade terrorists more than two decades ago, brought the Italian flag that had been draped over the casket, and it was hoisted over the rally.

Many marchers carried large yellow posters in the shape of a fist with the forefinger and little finger raised--a gesture that, in southern Europe, means “Your wife is cheating on you.” Berlusconi playfully made that sign over the Spanish foreign minister’s head during a photo session in Spain a month ago.

Saturday’s marching yellow fists read: “An informal salute to the prime minister.”

Berlusconi belittled the rally and said Italians wouldn’t be impressed either. “The Italians know how to distinguish between the good and bad, between love and hate,” he said. “And the majority are for love.”