Berlusconi licensed off his decree last night which was signed into law shortly after by President Napolitano. (A decree must be approved by parliament within a period that will take us beyond the elections.) Throughout the day prominent opposition figures sought to negotiate a common front on action to be taken. They've decided on a mass demonstration possibly next Saturday.

Just a short while ago Formigoni was readmitted into the electoral contest.

The decree in itself is characterized as an interpretive law which does not change the present law but enlarges its interpretation to cover only the specific cases in Rome and Lombardy and only for Berlusconi's party. All of the other parties excluded in other regions are not included in the decree, creating an obvious discrimination. In short, it is a law made exclusively for one party in two distinct geographical areas.

There are grounds for judging the decree unconstitutional. It is likely that these elections will be nullified in the near future because of the decree.

The institutions have been deluged by emails by irate citizens and spontaneous demonstrations have taken place throughout Italy. Di Pietro has called for the impeachment of the President of the Republic while others accuse him of acting like the Facta government before the Fascist takeover (like Chamberlain in Munich). Other prominent leaders on the Left have however defended Napolitano's action while laying responsibility for the actual social-political crisis at Berlusconi's doorstep.

Napolitano has sought to defend his position considering the exceptional circumstances. Apparently he considers his choice causing the lesser damage. Nevertheless, the events these past days have caused an irreversible rift within Italian society. It will take a long time to bridge the gap. But as many now believe, the present situation is exactly what Berlusconi wants. He is in deep trouble with his pending trials. Mills was definitively condemned for taking bribes and Italian law automatically asserts that someone bribed him. It is practically a formality that Berlusconi is guilty of bribery, although he will beat the rap with procedural alchemy. He has other cases pending and his entire power group is under investigation for extremely grave cases of bribery, misappropriation of state funds, rigging tenders and general corruption, not to mention possible on going ties with organized crime. In all this his personal political entity, the PdL, is collapsing in a dog-eat-dog scenario. So he has little else to do but throw tits and ass to the public, declare he'll just create another party and see to it that his RAI flunky Masi ban in depth news programs, causing an utter collapse in audience shares for State-owned TV.

We're in the paradoxical situation in which Murdoch's Sky is the only decent source of televised information. Berlusconi is just too far right for Murdoch.

If you want news in Italy you're one of the few people who read newspapers or use internet.