Silvio Berlusconi and the traitors

Sunday, November 8, 2011. A vote on the previous year's public finances review reveals Mr Berlusconi's majority may have gone. For good.

Silvio Berlusconi looking at vote results

In the recent past, any vote in the Chamber of Deputies have became a challenge to the prime minister majority, but Silvio Berlusconi has always managed to sort things out, mainly through late horse-trading sessions, many believe.

Beside this, his closest ally – Northern League's Umberto Bossi – has always kept defending his boss.

Berlusconi tried anything to keep Italian's faith, even promising to change his party's name, to a more intriguing one.

Nothing doing.

And when Umberto Bossi was asked by the journalists whether Berlusconi should step down, he answered: maybe not, just step aside.

Vote in the Italian Parliament

Meanwhile the horse-trading somehow got a reverse stream in the past days, as more and more people realised that without Berlusconi's resignation there was no way out of the current lockout. Pressure ratcheted up on him to resign. And few of his allies decided to flee the sinking boat.

And today – yet again – the parliament had to vote on the “rendiconto” (a financial review) that lead to a tie vote just one month ago (see Silvio Berlusconi and the really, really bad luck).

Well, today things went differenty: instead of a draw, Berlusconi's government reached a win in the vote, but he obtained only 308 votes where the absolute majority is of 316 votes.

There are 8 traitors, and Berlusconi has reviewed the list of voters to reveal (and possibly hunt down) them, but this time no horse-trading seem to work and save his government.