Berlusconi won with a razor-thin majority, as 314 lawmakers voted in his favor with 311 against and two abstentions in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies lower house.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hardly on Tuesday survived a crucial confidence vote in Parliament.
Berlusconi won with a razor-thin majority, as 314 lawmakers voted in his favor with 311 against and two abstentions in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies lower house.
His government earlier won a comfortable majority in the Senate.
Tens of thousands of anti-Berlusconi protesters meanwhile marched through Italy's biggest cities. Some of the protesters in Rome set off smoke flares, hurled bottles and threw firecrackers, while police fired tear gas.
The vote followed heated debates in both chambers of parliament and a fight broke out between some supporters and opponents of the prime minister in the tense minutes before the announcement of the result in the lower house.
Berlusconi earlier voiced confidence in a victorious outcome as he arrived in parliament and said he "absolutely excluded" his resignation, demanded by former allies from his centre-right coalition who rebelled against him.
The government's current mandate is set to run out in 2013 but some analysts have argued that Italy will now still have to hold early parliamentary elections because the government's narrow majority could paralyze parliament.
"This is a country that is tired and wants change," the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, Pier Luigi Bersani, said ahead of the vote.
Antonio Di Pietro, a former anti-corruption judge and leader of the Italy of Values party, said Berlusconi's "papier-mache empire" was finished.
But Fabrizio Cicchitto, the leader of Berlusconi's People of Freedom party in the lower house, said: "Berlusconi's story is not over."
Berlusconi won with a razor-thin majority, as 314 lawmakers voted in his favor with 311 against and two abstentions in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies lower house.
His government earlier won a comfortable majority in the Senate.
Tens of thousands of anti-Berlusconi protesters meanwhile marched through Italy's biggest cities. Some of the protesters in Rome set off smoke flares, hurled bottles and threw firecrackers, while police fired tear gas.
The vote followed heated debates in both chambers of parliament and a fight broke out between some supporters and opponents of the prime minister in the tense minutes before the announcement of the result in the lower house.
Berlusconi earlier voiced confidence in a victorious outcome as he arrived in parliament and said he "absolutely excluded" his resignation, demanded by former allies from his centre-right coalition who rebelled against him.
The government's current mandate is set to run out in 2013 but some analysts have argued that Italy will now still have to hold early parliamentary elections because the government's narrow majority could paralyze parliament.
"This is a country that is tired and wants change," the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, Pier Luigi Bersani, said ahead of the vote.
Antonio Di Pietro, a former anti-corruption judge and leader of the Italy of Values party, said Berlusconi's "papier-mache empire" was finished.
But Fabrizio Cicchitto, the leader of Berlusconi's People of Freedom party in the lower house, said: "Berlusconi's story is not over."
