ROME (Reuters) – A hot-headed Italian lawmaker was carried out of parliament by his arms and legs on Thursday after yelling abuse at fellow parliamentarians.
Art critic and lower house deputy Vittorio Sgarbi has had a long political career mainly in former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, and is known for his publicity stunts and foul-mouthed outbursts on television talk shows.
He has been convicted many times for slander and at Thursday’s parliamentary sitting he took aim at the judiciary, one of his favourite targets, comparing some prosecutors to mobsters.
He was called to order by the acting speaker but continued to shout insults towards her and another female lawmaker, before ushers carried him out of the chamber by his arms and legs to chants of “shame” from other parliamentarians.
The video of the episode was put on the home page of Italy’s main newspapers and went viral on Italian social media accounts.
The acting speaker Mara Carfagna told the house she was ordering Sgarbi’s ejection because of his “unrepeatable words” towards her and the other lawmaker, a former prosecutor who had criticised Sgarbi’s words on the judiciary.
Sgarbi has boasted of having sex in parliament with lawmakers and actresses, and ahead of the 2018 election he published a video of himself on the toilet with his trousers around his ankles while insulting his adversary Luigi Di Maio, then leader of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement.
Lower House Speaker Roberto Fico said after Thursday’s episode that Sgarbi’s “sexist behaviour was indecent and unworthy.”
(Reporting by Gavin Jones and Angelo Amante; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
