Forza Italia 'party of purges' says dissident Fitto

(ANSA) - Rome, March 24 - 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.