Berlusconi Plans Broader Party

Silvio Berlusconi last night surprised political friends and foes alike by announcing he was dissolving Forza Italia!, the party he has led for the past 14 years, to replace it with a new - hopefully broader -movement that he intends calling the Italian People of Freedoms party.

Italy's richest man and unofficial opposition leader broke the news amid chaotic scenes when he visited a stand set up by his party in a Milan square. The stand was among hundreds used by Forza Italia! in recent days to collect signatures for a petition demanding the resignation of Romano Prodi's center-left government.

Surrounded by jostling supporters, Berlusconi claimed seven million people had backed the petition. With his latest protege, Michela Vittoria Brambilla, at his side, he said: "Now it is important to give life to a new creation [that can promote] freedom and democracy in the coming decades."

Berlusconi has for months been predicting the demise of the Prodi administration. But last week it again survived a key parliamentary vote on the budget.

The outcome unleashed a torrent of criticism from the billionaire politician's allies, who accused him of offering the electorate propaganda, rather than policies. Yet Berlusconi's response has been to take refuge in the very populism they deplore, first with his petition and now with the creation of a new movement.

Though Prodi's government is languishing in the polls, the two biggest parties in the governing majority have merged into a Democratic party that will present the right with a formidable challenge. Berlusconi indicated that he hoped his new party would give the divided conservatives a common home. But Umberto Bossi of the Northern League said he feared it was "just a favor to Prodi".