Rome, Nov 18 (IANS/AKI) Italy's coalition government is more stable after the centre-right party of Silvio Berlusconi split at the weekend, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta said Monday.
"I'm sure that what happened in the centre-right will help Italy's stability," Letta said at a conference organised by the Financial Times.
Berlusconi, a billionaire media tycoon and three-time prime minister, Saturday relaunched his movement under its original name of Forza Italia and said it would pull out of the government if he was voted out of parliament for tax fraud.
The move prompted his former political heir, interior minister and deputy premier Angelino Alfano, to announce a breakaway party called Nuovo Centro Destra (New Centre Right) that will keep supporting the government.
"The NCD's creation clarifies the situation," Letta said.
Alfano's group has over 20 lawmakers in the lower house of parliament and some 30 in the upper house Senate, giving Letta a viable - albeit slimmer - majority should Forza Italia withdraw its support.
Berlusconi is furious that Letta's centre-left Democratic Party is backing a move to remove him from parliament, saying it wants to commit "political homicide".
A full Senate vote is due to take place next week after Italy's supreme court upheld Berlusconi's conviction for tax fraud by his Mediaset empire in an Aug 1 ruling.
The split within Berlusconi's party had been looming since October when Alfano led a rebellion that forced the 77-year-old magnate to hold a vote of confidence in the government in what was widely seen as a humiliating climbdown.
Italy's unwieldy coalition government between Berlusconi's party and the Democratic Party was formed in April to end two months of political deadlock after February's national elections returned a hung parliament.
--IANS/AKI
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