Berlusconi edges ahead in battle over judges

An act of parliament designed, opponents charge, to keep Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's closest political and business ally out of jail, drew one step closer to becoming law yesterday.

Opposition MPs tried to force the Italian parliament to reconsider the bill with new amendments this week, but a committee of MPs approved the passage of the law in its present form. It remains for the Senate to pass the Cirami bill, a certainty, and for the President to sign it, which is likely.

Cesare Previti, an MP in Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party and minister of defence in his 1994 administration, is on trial in Milan on charges of bribing judges and false accounting. But Mr Berlusconi believes the judges in Milan are prejudiced against him and determined to damage him.

The bill will allow defendants with "legitimate suspicion" that the judges are biased to have the trial switched to an alternative jurisdiction. Mr Berlusconi's supporters insist the law will merely restore a right withdrawn from defendants some years ago, when it was said that accused Mafiosi were escaping justice by having their cases switched.

Mr Berlusconi wants the case moved to the central Italian city of Perugia. Once the bill has been passed by the Senate, President Carlo Ciampi has a month to sign it into law – long enough in theory for the Milan court to put Mr Previti behind bars or acquit him.

Recently, Mr Berlusconi's high popularity rating has begun to slump. "But that's not because of the trial," says Dr James Walston of the American University at Rome, "but because he's messing with the economy. Many people say, 'We know he's a crook but so what as long as he delivers on the economy.' But now he's no longer delivering."