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Berlusconi appoints mafia-tainted lawmaker as agriculture minister

23 March 2011 23:14 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. In a controversial cabinet re-shuffle Wednesday, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appointed as agriculture minister a Sicilian parliamentarian who is under investigation for alleged mafia ties, APA reports quoting â€œMonsters and Criticsâ€.
Francesco Saverio Romano’s appointment was accepted with ’reservations’ by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the president’s office said in a statement.
Napolitano noted how a magistrate who is heading preliminary investigations has yet to decide whether or not to drop the Cosa Nostra-related investigation against Romano.
Romano’s appointment is widely seen a reward for his decision to quit the opposition centrist Catholic UDC party - with which he was elected to parliament - and support Berlusconi in a crucial no-confidence vote held in December.
Berlusconi has been attempting to boost the ranks of his conservative coalition since a split in his People of Freedom party last year left the government with a wafer-thin majority in parliament’s lower house Chamber of Deputies.
’Romano’s nomination is wrong an inopportune ... Someone who is being investigated on mafia charges can not be a minister,’ said Massimo Donadi of the centre-left opposition Italy of Values party.
But Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa defended the appointment, saying that only ’bureaucratic delays’ had prevented the dropping of the investigation against Romano.
Also Wednesday, Romano’s predecessor as agriculture minister, Giancarlo Galan, took over as culture minister, a position vacated by Sandro Bondi’s resignation.
Bondi had come under fire for his ministry’s alleged negligence in safeguarding Italy’s archaeological treasures, including the Roman ruins of Pompeii, where several walls and buildings collapsed in December.
Bondi, who earlier this year survived a parliament no-confidence vote brought against him by the opposition, said he was resigning due to the ’lack of support’ he had received within the government.