Silvio Berlusconi accused of buying MPs' votes

The state prosecution service in Rome today opened an investigation into claims that Silvio Berlusconi was buying up MPs before a series of votes in parliament next Tuesday to decide on the future of his government.

The move followed a sharp about-turn late last night when a leading member of Berlusconi's party, the rightwing People of Freedom party (PdL), announced that the government, which has been without a clear majority for the past five months, could be sure of winning by at least one vote. Just hours before, a senior party source told the Guardian that the billionaire prime minister's chances of survival were no better than 50/50.

News also emerged of the latest of up to eight defections by MPs previously considered to be either in opposition or non-aligned.

The gradual shift in the balance of advantage in parliament has taken place against a barrage of claims that there is what Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, has called a "transfer market" in politicians.

Italy's most widely read Catholic weekly, Famiglia Cristiana, said the situation was worse than in the early 1990s when the old Christian Democrat-dominated order collapsed in a welter of sleaze. "The thirty pieces of silver have taken on more modern forms, but without changing their significance," it said.

According to an independent deputy, the going price for a vote is between EUR 350,000 and EUR 500,000, but those under suspicion have vigorously denied accepting payments in cash or kind.

Berlusconi today exuded confidence. "We're moving ahead without letting ourselves be diverted by political folly," he declared. His defence minister, Ignazio La Russa, said: "The problem of the censure vote has already been overcome."

The government's survival hangs on two motions of no confidence in the chamber. There, Berlusconi and his allies appeared to lose their majority as far back as July when followers of the formerly neo-fascist Fini split away from the PdL .

In recent days, at least four deputies have changed sides, including one who had earlier put his name to one of the censure motions. Several other members of the lower house who had been expected to vote with the opposition have signalled they too could side with the government on Tuesday.

The most recent defectors were from the vehemently anti-Berlusconi Italy of Principles (IdV) party. The prosecution service announced its investigation after a formal complaint was submitted by the IdV's leader, Antonio Di Pietro, himself a former prosecutor.

"The judicial authorities must determine if, in a normal country, it is possible for people elected in one party to be induced or obliged to change their vote and for what reasons that happens," he said. Referring to the two former members of his party who had defected, he said: "May the Good Lord have pity on them."

Fabrizio Cicchitto, the PdL leader in the lower house, said the prosecutors' decision "represented a very serious interference in the free parliamentary dialogue".

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