A divisive ruler

>Published: November 21 2005 02:00 | Last updated: November 21 2005 02:00 The way in which Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, governs his country never ceases to amaze - and dismay. Far too often, his priorities appear to be personal, or narrowly party political. He has been remarkably successful in keeping his centre-right coalition together and staying in office for four and a half years. His latest achievement has been to force big constitutional changes through the Italian parliament without any serious attempt at cross-party agreement. Yet at the same time he is bent on reversing the very electoral reforms that have brought much-needed stability to Italian governments in the past decade. Not only are the measures contradictory, they are in danger of absorbing so much parliamentary time that the only significant economic reforms of Mr Berlusconi's government - to overhaul the state pension system and strengthen the regulation of financial markets - may fail to become law before next April's elections. The constitutional reforms will devolve significant powers from Italy's central government to its regions, including responsibility for education, healthcare, and law and order. They also seek to enhance the prime minister's powers, and reduce those of the state president, for example to dissolve parliament and appoint cabinet ministers. Devolution will appease the populist Northern League, junior partner in the ruling coalition. But critics fear it will weaken the cohesion of the Italian state, and make fiscal transfers from the wealthy north to the poorer south much more difficult. Yet instead of seeking a broad consensus to make such fundamental changes, Mr Berlusconi used his parliamentary majority to force them through. Those reforms still need a national referendum to be approved. The prime minister's electoral reforms - to return to the old system of proportional representation that produced chronically unstable Italian governments for 45 years - need no such confirmation. The move is a blatant attempt to improve the chances of Mr Berlusconi's coalition next April, although it still lags well behind the centre-left opposition in opinion polls. It would revive the power of venal party barons, and weaken executive authority. On top of all this, Mr Berlusconi is still seeking to win approval for a law to reduce the statute of limitations for crimes including corruption, which would inter alia wipe out the conviction imposed on Cesare Previti, his former personal lawyer, in 2003. And he has vowed to introduce a new law in time for the elections to lift restrictions on political advertising, allowing him to exploit his vast media empire. Against such priorities, vital economic reforms threaten to come a poor second. If they do, Mr Berlusconi will go down in history as the man who squandered a unique opportunity in pursuit of a selfish agenda.

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Row over pill may see pro-life activists in Italy's abortion clinics

· Berlusconi moves to woo conservative Catholics
· Vatican intervenes over easy access to termination

John Hooper in Rome
Wednesday November 16, 2005

Guardian

Silvio Berlusconi's government is considering putting pro-life activists into state-funded abortion advice centres to discourage women from terminating their pregnancies.

The move follows a furious dispute over the growing use in Italy of the abortion pill, Mifepristone, which pro-life campaigners fear makes termination of pregnancies easier.

At the Vatican, the pope's chief adviser on health, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, told the Guardian yesterday: "An abortion, small or great, is homicide all the same." His remark was the latest in a string of condemnations by senior church officials of the pill, also known as RU-486. The Vatican's daily, L'Osservatore Romano, said last month the pill was an example of "science in the service of death" and the Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has drawn a comparison between the use of the pill and King Herod's massacre of the innocents.

Italy's health minister, Francesco Storace, of the formerly neo-fascist National Alliance, who has tried to stem the use of the pill, said he was planning a shake-up of the advice centres created under Italy's abortion law to make sure they included Roman Catholic volunteers from the Movement for Life group. He said the 1978 law was passed "not just to legalise abortion but to prevent it".

Mifepristone can be used in the termination of pregnancies up to 64 days after conception. It was discovered in France in 1980 and has since been licensed for use in France, Britain, the US and other countries. It has not been specifically approved in Italy. But under a 1997 law, Italian health authorities can buy from abroad drugs licensed in other EU countries. A hospital in Turin began testing Mifepristone in September, but two weeks later Mr Storace halted the experiment saying he wanted to safeguard the health of the women involved.

The tests resumed earlier this month after the hospital agreed to keep women in hospital for at least two days while they were taking the pill and its accompaniment, Misoprostol. Since then, health authorities in at least four regions have made the treatment available much to the annoyance of Mr Storace, who yesterday accused them of coming together in a "movement for the overturning of principles". On Monday, the head of the Italian bishops' conference, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, said the abortion pill was a way of disguising "the suppression of an innocent human life".

Pro-choice campaigners have been fearing an assault by the church on Italy's legislation since last year, when a cross-party majority of MPs brought in a law on assisted fertilisation that gave embryos full rights from the point of conception. That appeared to be at odds with Italy's abortion act, which allows for termination in the first three months of pregnancy.

With a general election less than five months away, there are also signs Mr Berlusconi's government is out to woo the Catholic vote. The 2006 budget, currently making its way through parliament, frees the Catholic church and other denominations from the need to pay local authority rates.

The abortion row in Italy mirrors one in Australia, where the government is considering whether or not to lift a ban on Mifepristone imposed by the Labour government in the 1990s. One state, Victoria, has ordered mandatory counselling for women having late-term abortions.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005     http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1643503,00.html