Silvi-No

Sydney-based Italians will call for the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as they join a global day of protest on Saturday.

The ‘No Berlusconi Day’ will see more than 240,000 people holding rallies across major European capitals, the United States, the Middle East and Latin America.

Raffaele Pellico, who is organising the Sydney protest, moved to Australia last year, in part due to frustration with the state of politics back home. “One of the reasons was because I was tired to hear about Berlusconi on every single television station – the Italian Prime Minister is the owner of the three most important commercial TV channels,” Mr Pellico said. “So after my graduation, I took the first airplane and I left for the farthest place possible.”

According to him, scores of Italians have also made the decision to leave the country for this reason. “Lots of young Italian people are leaving the country because of this reason,” he said. “But this shouldn’t happen. People need to go back to Italy to fight and to try to build a better country.”

Mr Pellico feels embarrassment in light the constant stream of negative news about the Italian Prime Minister. “[The fact that] a Prime Minister is known around the world for his relationship with girls tells you that he is not doing his job.”

A corruption trial against Mr Berlusconi will resume on Friday, after the country’s constitutional court lifted his immunity from prosecution. He is accused of paying his former British tax adviser David Mills $US600,000 in bribes to give misleading evidence in two corruption trials. Last month, Mills had his four-and-a-half-year sentence confirmed by an appeal court in Milan for accepting the bribes.

“In this period, when all the other Prime Ministers are thinking how to help people who have lost their jobs, how to help their people survive this [economic] crisis, in Italy he is trying to save himself from loss in the tribunal for Mafia and corruption,” Mr Pellico said.

“We don’t want him as Prime Minister because he is not doing a good job for Italy – he is only thinking about himself.”

The rally will be held in front of the Italian consulate in Circular Quay at 1pm on December 5.

by Ehssan Veiszadeh