Trouble seemed to be brewing among
the ranks of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party on
Tuesday after one of its MPs was rapidly relieved of his
position on the Lower House justice committee after remarks in
parliament in which he accused two Berlusconi loyalists of
"purging and destroying the party".
"They're not interested in the destiny of our party," Lower
House MP Gianfranco Chiarelli said just before voting took place
on the government's statute of limitations bill.
Chiarielli was swiftly replaced on the committee by House
whip Renato Brunetta, which in turn sparked a furious reaction
from FI dissident and former Berlusconi confidant, MEP Raffaele
Fitto.
"What have we become?" he said.
"The party of censorship and compulsory administration, of
purges and substitutions".
The 45-year-old MEP has led the opposition to the
leadership of FI, which came to a head in January when
center-left Premier Matteo Renzi imposed Sergio
Mattarella as Italian president without FI's backing.
Fitto last month called on Berlusconi to scrap all party
posts so a new leadership can take charge "as a matter of
credibility and political decorum".
On Tuesday, fellow dissident and Lower House MP Maurizio
Bianconi also chimed in.
"This is not the first time I tell Fitto that the
Berlusconi caliphate has strangled every impulse to relaunch the
center-right...and that (the party) is fraught with idiots,
servants, subjects, and hitmen," Bianconi said.
"We are in the last days of FI," he added.
"Is Tiberius about to withdraw to Capri?" he said in
reference to the 1st-century AD Roman emperor who lived his last
years on the island off Naples, leaving the Roman empire in the
hands of his prefects.
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