Will Rubygate sink Berlusconi?

“Ruby: Berlusconi on trial,” leads La Repubblica, in the wake of a ruling by a Milan judge that the head of state should be sent straight to trial without committal proceedings. The judge believes that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute him for paying underage prostitute Karima El-Mahroug, a.k.a Ruby Heartstealer for sexual services, and pressuring Milan’s police chief to release her when she was arrested for theft last May. Given the “very serious” charges faced by the Italian premier, the director of the left-wing daily Ezio Mauro argues that the only possible solution to the political crisis prompted by the trial, which will open on 6 April, will be for Italy’s citizens “to go to the polls.” In the Corriere della Sera conservative columnist Sergio Romano insists that on the contrary, Berlusconi should remain in office while he goes on trial so that the fate of his government “is not decided in a court room” and to show “that politics is not a matter for the courts, but for parliaments and polling stations.”