Berlusconi’s approval rating slips after prostitutes scandal

ITALIAN prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s approval rating has slipped below 50% after a scandal about prostitutes and news that his wife was divorcing him because of his relationship with a teenage girl from Naples.

Berlusconi’s credibility is under attack just when he is about to host a summit of G8 leaders, and he has had to spend his time defending his private life and denying that he paid for sex.

The 72-year-old media tycoon had an approval rating of 49.1% in a new opinion poll by ISPO for Corriere della Sera newspaper published yesterday. The pollsters compared that to his average of 51% for the first five months of 2009.

That is way under the 61% support that Berlusconi himself said this week that he enjoys, citing his own private polls. But even that would be a sharp drop from the 75% popularity rating Berlusconi had claimed before the scandals.

“The fact remains that, despite everything, Berlusconi still enjoys the trust of roughly half of Italian people,” political analyst Renato Mannheimer said.

The ISPO poll showed a sharp fall in support among women and young people, but especially among practicing Catho-lics, where his approval dropped to 54% from 61%.