Rome - The bitter feud between Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his arch-rival Gianfranco Fini hit new depths on Friday as accusations of smears, lies and dirty tricks flew ahead of a showdown in parliament next week.
The split between Berlusconi and Fini, co-founders of the ruling People of Freedom party (PDL), has dominated the Italian political scene for months and brought the centre-right government close to collapse.
Fini, the speaker of parliament, has accused the billionaire media entrepreneur Berlusconi of running the government like one of his private companies, while the prime minister accuses his rival of betrayal and says he is moved by personal ambition.
But the rancour has grown this week after Fini supporters said the government had used elements in the intelligence services as part of a media smear campaign that even drew in the government of the tiny Caribbean island of Saint Lucia.
“The problem now concerns the democracy of this country,” Italo Bocchino, one of Fini's closest lieutenants, told Sky TG24 television on Friday.
The accusations have been furiously denied by the government, which said they were defamatory and irresponsible.
Coming ahead of a speech by Berlusconi in parliament next week that will be followed by a vote to show whether the government can still command a majority, the charges appear to have killed any hope of a reconciliation.
Fini has the support of 34 lower house deputies and 10 senators who broke away from the PDL in July. But after weeks of arm-twisting and cajoling, Berlusconi's backers think they have won enough support from centrists and others to ensure the prime minister could survive a confidence vote.
The sheer personal hatred in the fight was illustrated by a front page photo this week in Libero, another government-friendly newspaper, which showed a long-range shot of a naked Fini changing into his bathing trunks, headlined “The President is Naked.”
“It remains to be seen whether, beyond the numbers, the centre-right can succeed in managing relationships which have deteriorated irreparably at a human level,” the daily Corriere della Sera said in an editorial.
A series of corruption scandals implicating ministers and other Berlusconi associates have given Fini's camp plenty of ammunition but the prime minister's allies have responded with charges of their own.
For weeks, Il Giornale, a newspaper run by Berlusconi's brother, has published a daily stream of articles accusing Fini of improper dealings over an apartment in Monaco bequeathed by a supporter of his former party, the right wing National Alliance. Fini has denied accusations that the flat, which was left as a gift to the National Alliance in 1999, was sold at below its true value to an offshore company that was a front for the younger brother of his partner, Elisabetta Tulliani.
The charges, reported with wildly differing slants according to the political colour of the media concerned, are potentially serious for Fini, who has attacked Berlusconi over a series of corruption scandals and made clean government his rallying cry.
In the most recent development, a document apparently from the tiny Caribbean island of Saint Lucia was published by a number of media organisations in Italy, purportedly linking Tulliani's brother to the offshore company.
Fini's camp denounced the letter as a forgery by a businessman with close links to Berlusconi who had accompanied the prime minister on trips in Latin America. - Reuters