Supreme court moves to hear Berlusconi's final appeal before conviction expires under law his government passed in 2005
The parliamentary leaders of Silvio Berlusconi's party have demanded the suspension of parliament in protest at a decision by the supreme court aimed at preventing him from evading a four-year jail sentence on a technicality.
The heads of the media tycoon's Freedom People (PdL) movement in both chambers said they wanted the legislature to cease all activity for three days. The centre-left Democratic Party (PD), which is joined to the PdL in Italy's left-right coalition, immediately rejected the demand, opening a rift within Enrico Letta's already fragile government.
In a further threat to its survival, Berlusconi's representatives announced they were boycotting a meeting on Wednesday of the three parties that make up the coalition.
The media tycoon has already been convicted in two lower courts of a €7.5m (£6.5m) tax fraud orchestrated by his Mediaset TV company. The judges added to the prison sentence, which Berlusconi is unlikely to have to serve, a ban on his holding office for five years, which would be an even harsher blow.
If his case had followed its normal course through the supreme court, his final appeal would have been heard in about six months' time. But – as the result of a law passed by Berlusconi's government in 2005 – one of the counts on which he was charged would have been "timed out" in the meantime by a statute of limitations.
The judges would probably have had to send the case back to a lower court for a recalculation of the sentence. In Italy, that could easily take 12 months, during which period the other count would have been timed out.
The supreme court decided that Berlusconi's appeal should be heard on 30 July before a tribunal that deals with urgent matters during the summer legal holidays.
The billionaire politician's followers expressed outrage at the decision. Maurizio Lupi, the transport minister, said: "Millions of Italians wait years for justice, but for Silvio Berlusconi the [supreme court] gets convened in record time."
But the Corriere della Sera, the paper that first spotted the loophole through which the leader of the Italian right might once again wriggle, pointed to a 1969 law that instructs judges to speed up cases that are at risk of lapsing during the summer break because of a statute of limitations.
Roberto Maroni, the leader of the Northern League, which was in coalition with the PdL until 2011, said a suspension of parliament would be an "affront to democracy".