The Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday approved a bill which will enshrine the principle of "legitimate impediment" and allow Premier Silvio Berlusconi not to attend trials against him because of official commitments. The measure has caused a furore in the opposition, which claims it is tailor-made to help the premier deal with his legal woes, even though the legitimate impediment will be extended to cabinet ministers. The bill, which saw 316 votes for, 239 against and 40 abstentions, must now be approved by the Senate and signed by President Giorgio Napolitano before it becomes law. The leader of the opposition Italy of Values (IdV) party, Antonio Di Pietro, said the bill was akin to "murdering the law" while an MP for his party said the House was celebrating "a funeral for justice" by approving it. Di Pietro, a former anti-graft prosecutor in the 1990s Clean Hands investigations in Milan, said the government was ''fascist''. ''Italy is not a normal country,'' he added. '

'In a normal country, it would be fairer to give (such trials) precedence rather than put up a legal impediment''. Voting for the bill also sparked tension in the opposition after the centrist UDC party said it would abstain rather than vote against the measure, arguing that it was a "lesser evil" compared to other ideas the majority has raised to freeze the premier's trials. The bill and another measure currently making its way through parliament - which would cap the length of trials - were presented after two trials against the premier were reactivated in October by a Constitutional Court ruling that quashed a 2008 immunity law putting them on hold while he was in office. Berlusconi is on trial in Milan for bribing British corporate lawyer David Mills to withhold testimony in two previous trials. The trial has been suspended until February 27 to await the result of Mill's third and final appeal against his four-and-a-half year sentence. The second Berlusconi trial concerns alleged tax fraud in the sale of film rights by his Mediaset group.

The opposition is up in arms over both bills as well as talk of reviving parliamentary immunity, which was abolished in the 1990s, in the midst of the 'Clean Hands' anti-graft investigations by Milan prosecutors which led to the demise of the Socialist and Christian Democrat parties. Pier Ferdinando Casini, leader of the UDC, said he sympathised with critics of the bill but believed that MPs needed to deal with the issue of the premier's judicial problems and "take the bull by the horns". The UDC says that it has reached an agreement with the majority to shelve the trial-cap bill for now because that measure, which would set a limit on the duration of trials, is even more hotly contested by the opposition. Casini, a former Berlusconi ally, was the first to raise the idea of enshrining the principle of 'legitimate impediment' for elected officials after the Constitutional Court quashed the so-called Alfano law, which froze trials against the premier, the president and House and Senate Speakers while in office. Despite being modified compared to a previous version quashed in 2004, the court also overturned the 2008 Alfano law because it denied the fundamental principle that everyone is equal before the law.

Rosy Bindi, a former minister and chairman of the biggest opposition group, the Democratic Party (PD), stressed that the bill was "unacceptable and unconstitutional". Former premier Massimo D'Alema told the House on Tuesday that the bill was in fact "a ruse to get round the problem" as well as "a challenge to the Constitutional Court". Shortly before the vote, Bruno Tabacci, an MP with the newly formed centrist API Party accused Berlusconi of trying to set himself above the law by "changing laws at his will, unmindful of the balance between (judicial and executive) powers and the constitution". "It's a sick vision of democracry," he told the House. But Government Programme Minister Gianfranco Rotondi accused the opposition of "whipping up a non-existent case", rebutting that the bill "is about justice and not political arrogance." Berlusconi, who denies all wrongdoing, says he is the victim of persecution by a politically inspired judiciary. His trials, which all regard his activity as an entrepreneur before entering politics in 1994, have never produced a definitive conviction although in some cases he has been cleared because of law changes.