The long-awaited decision by Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, to call for the resignation of Antonio Fazio, governor of the Bank of Italy, may have satisfied many exasperated critics, but it has done little to ease the political tension within the premier's four-party coalition.
Mr Berlusconi had for nearly two months resisted joining politicians, bankers, jurists and business leaders who have called for Mr Fazio to step down following revelations that, according to his critics, showed the governor and his wife sought to favour an Italian bank in a takeover battle with ABN Amro, a Dutch lender, for another Italian institution.
Mr Berlusconi has feared alienating the Northern League, a populist party with a strong base in northern Italy that is crucial to his election chances in coming months. The Northern League has been the only party to back Mr Fazio openly, claiming he is defending national interests.
Even in condemning Mr Fazio on Thursday, the prime minister avoided using the word "resign". To reporters he said Mr Fazio was "incompatible with the country's credibility". Later, during a television programme, he said he hoped Mr Fazio would do the right thing, but then asked for the European Central Bank to intervene, claiming "governments in the European Union are not allowed to fire central bank governors".
The ECB, as it had already done previously, rejected Mr Berlusconi's argument.
Mr Berlusconi, in negotiating a rapid substitution for Domenico Siniscalco, who resigned as finance minister on Thursday in protest over the government's handling of the Fazio affair, will have to act swiftly to appease the Northern League.
The League, which has often threatened to leave the government, could remain content if Mr Berlusconi manages to press ahead in the remaining months of government with the party's most coveted desire: constitutional reform that will give greater autonomy to parts of northern Italy.
Regardless of Mr Fazio, the coalition is rife with disputes ranging from the budget, which by law has to be approved by the government in a week's time, to constitutional reform.
In particular, the Northern League's emphasis on the special demands of northern Italy has offended two other coalition partners, the right-wing National Alliance and the centrist Christian Democrats, both more sympathetic to southern Italy's interests and to state interventionism.
The point was proved this month when persistent quarrels compelled Mr Berlusconi to postpone a plan to unite his centre-right forces into a single party for the next election.
Mr Berlusconi's once undisputed leadership on the right has been undermined by the apparent collapse in support for Forza Italia, his party. It now attracts support of about 19-20 per cent, far below the 29.4 per cent it won in Italy's 2001 election. Some members of the coalition are calling for a primary to decide who might lead the right in the next election.
Complaining that his allies were endlessly sniping at him, Mr Berlusconi declared recently: "One day or another I shall explode. . . I shall say, 'Either be with me, or get out'." Italy's banking tragedy swiftly turned to farce yesterday when Giulio Tremonti, the finance minister, on his first full day in the job, did an impression for reporters of Mr Fazio, his arch enemy.
"If you don't go away, you'll get a bit of a roughing up," a smiling Mr Tremonti said to reporters who gathered around him in Washington. The joke was a quotation from a famous television clip from 2003 in which Mr Fazio had asked a bodyguard to deal with an insistent reporter.
