The Italian Senate on Wednesday expelled Silvio Berlusconi from parliament following his conviction for tax fraud, in what the centre-right leader called a day of mourning for Italian democracy.
The Senate speaker declared he was ineligible for a seat in parliament after the house rejected a series of challenges by Berlusconi's supporters to a proposal for his expulsion. No formal vote was held.
Berlusconi was sentenced in August to four years in prison, commuted to a year under house arrest or in community service, for masterminding an illegal scheme to reduce the tax bill of his media company Mediaset.
Earlier, Italian centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi pledged not to leave politics minutes before a Senate vote to expel him from parliament on following a tax fraud conviction earlier this year.
The man who has dominated Italian politics for 20 years said he can continue to lead his Forza Italia from outside parliament.
The Italian Senate was poised to kick Silvio Berlusconi out of Parliament following his tax fraud conviction, ending his two-decade run in public office but not his political career.
The three-time premier wasn't going quietly. While his lawyers chart possible legal challenges and his allies move into Italy's opposition, Berlusconi's fans massed in front of his Roman palazzo for rally that analysts said was essentially the start of Italy's next electoral campaign.
Two hours after the rally was due to start, only a few hundred flag-toting supporters had showed up, treated to a video montage of Berlusconi's greatest political hits from a career that began in 1994 when he first came into power with a political party named for a soccer chant "Go Italy."
The Senate vote on whether to remove Berlusconi from the chamber stems from a 2012 law that bans anyone sentenced to more than two years in prison from holding or running for public office for six years.
Italy's high court on Aug. 1 upheld Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction and four-year prison term stemming from his Mediaset empire's purchase of television rights to US films.
The prison term was reduced automatically to one year under a general amnesty; he will serve his time either under house arrest or through public service.
Berlusconi claims he didn't receive a fair trial and that the judges were biased and out to "eliminate" him from public office. His lawyers have also charged that the 2012 law is unconstitutional and can't be applied retroactively to crimes allegedly committed before it was passed.
They have taken their challenge to the European Court of Human Rights even though it turns out Berlusconi didn't make much of his Senate role to begin with: Private TV La7 reported this week that Berlusconi attended just one Senate session since April's elections. And that was when he did an about-face and backed the government in a confidence vote after threatening to bring it down.
Nevertheless, Berlusconi made a last-ditch bid to save his seat this week, sending a letter to opposition senators warning them that kicking a three-time premier out of public office would tarnish Italy's image abroad and weigh on their consciences, "a responsibility that in the future will shame you in front of your children, your electors and all Italians."
Enough lawmakers, however, seem poised to vote to remove Berlusconi, ending his remarkable two-decade run in public office but not his political life.
Berlusconi remains head of his relaunched Forza Italia party, which on Tuesday officially withdrew its support of the government of Premier Enrico Letta and is now in the opposition.
Despite the switch, Letta's government comfortably survived a confidence vote early Wednesday and passed the annual budget. He survived because Berlusconi's one-time political heir, Angelino Alfano, split from his mentor earlier this month and formed his own new center-right party that remains loyal to Letta.
Meanwhile, Berlusconi still faces other legal problems, including a seven-year prison term and lifetime ban from holding public office for his conviction of paying an underage prostitute for sex at his infamous Bunga Bunga parties and trying to cover it up. He has professed his innocence and plans to appeal.
AP/REUTERS