Berlusconi Survives Confidence Vote

The man who has ruled Italy on and off since 1994 narrowly avoided being ousted by parliament today.

Silvio Berlusconi’s womanizing makes Bill Clinton look celibate, and even relatively permissive Italians appeared to have finally had enough. The Italian prime minister’s latest sex scandal, involving allegations of group sex from a teenage Moroccan belly dancer named Ruby, combined with longstanding allegations of corruption to trigger two confidence votes in parliament Tuesday. Berlusconi easily survived one vote in the Senate, but later in the day won a much closer vote in the lower house by only three votes. As parliamentarians made their final speeches before the vote, Berlusconi warned that instability in the government could cause a financial crisis similar to the ones that have gripped Greece and Ireland.