Ally’s manifesto poses threat to Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's increasingly under-fire prime minister, is set to face a challenge from his right flank this week when a key ally launches a political manifesto. Gianfranco Fini, a member of Berlusconi's People of Freedom party and the president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (essentially the speaker of the lower house), will publish The Future of Freedom (Unasked-for Advice to Those Born in 1989) on Wednesday, a political tract in which he addresses the country's young.

Fini, formerly leader of the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), observes in his book how those born since the Berlin Wall came down escaped the realities of the Cold War and the horrors of communism, but maybe feel that the innovations of the last two decades such as the internet and a Europe without frontiers have "not necessarily" made them any happier.

"The death of ideology," he proclaims, has given rise to a generation who reject traditional politics, seeing it as "a vulgar exchange of insults". Fini calls for "inspiring vision, moral imperatives and family values" - presumably emanating from himself. Political commentator Sergio Romano called the book "not just a letter to the young" but also "a programme for government".

The 57-year-old former foreign minister spent much of his political life on the far right, being involved in street fights with communists during the 1960s, then rising to the top of the MSI. As national secretary of the party, Fini made some fairly unambiguous references to the tradition of fascism: he called former dictator Benito Mussolini "the greatest Italian statesman of the twentieth century" and said that "fascism has a tradition of honesty, correctness and good government".

But in recent years he has moved toward the centre, disbanding the MSI and shelving much of the rhetoric of the hard right, even defending the secularism of the Italian state, much to the disgust of his former party members. He has also used his role of speaker to criticise Silvio Berlusconi's government, rebuking the prime minister for his use of confidence votes to get legislation through the lower house.

The political manouevrings will be another fly in the ointment for the prime minister, who continues to suffer from scarlet fever. The 73-year-old defiantly said yesterday that even if he is convicted of fraud in a trial scheduled to commence this month, he will not resign from his position. ·