Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, 
nave sanza nocchiero in gran tempesta, 
non donna di province, ma bordello!
Quoting Dante (or Shakespeare, Wilde, Shaw) is, I admit the last resort of a scoundrel or at least the indolent scribe. But this one is too apposite not to use. Roughly translated, it reads “Alas enslaved Italy, inn of sorrow, a ship without a helmsman in a great storm, not a queen of her provinces, but a whorehouse”. It was the title of a book by Paolo Sylos Labini published posthumously in 2006; Sylos Labini was not only one of Italy’s most distinguished economists but a man of absolute integrity who consistently and very openly refused to compromise with Power (even “power” with a small ‘p’). His last work described, analysed and criticised the Italy of five years ago. Today’s Italy has been battered by even more internal storms as well as the obvious international economic ones; since then the Prime Minister’s residences have become brothels literally and not just metaphorically. Above all, the ship of state is near to being rudderless. So I am not the only person quoting Dante.
There has been a lack of clear leadership since the end of July as anyone who follows these blogs will know but over the last fortnight the lack of direction has become paroxystic. For most of August, Berlusconi threatened elections in order to bring the rebellious Fini and his followers to heel. Then as the polls showed that the only real winner in an early vote would be Umberto Bossi with the Northern League and, worse, that there was a good chance that he would not win a majority in the Senate, he started backpedalling. These last few days, his public statements once again refer to “three more years in order to carry out the Great Reforms”.
He spoke at the Kremlin organised Global Policy Forum in Yaroslavl last week about the details of Italian politics, with a swipe at Fini (without naming him) saying there were some who had created “little political businesses” (aziendine); then he made the nth complaint that “communist judges” were stopping him and his people from governing and finally, to cap his effusive welcome to Ghedaffi a week ago, came the remarkable statement that his hosts Putin and Medvedev were “god’s gift to democracy” (pity that The Economist’s KAL had beat him to it with a cartoon showing Vladimir Putin’s real love of democracy and the press.
Even the editor of one of his own papers, Vittorio Feltri in Il Giornale criticised him for wavering this morning. Worse, his approval ratings are down to 37% with the PdL below 30%.
We will know if the “three more years” proposal has any chance whatsover at the end of the month when the Chamber will debate Berlusconi’s five-point plan (justice, federalism, security, the south, the economy) and vote on it. In the meantime, it seems that he is on the expected shopping spree hoping to pick up independents so as to make up the loss of Fini’s deputies - he needs 19 to have a secure majority.
He has experience in convincing parliamentarians to come over to his side as revelations about the so-called P3 are showing. In late 2007, in another shopping spree, there was a lot of movement to bring Prodi’s government down and in January 2008 Prodi’s government duly fell. But the revelations themselves are proof of the change since then. It seems that most of the accused are singing as if they were in La Scala – and suggests rodents leaving the nave sanza nocchiero.
The storm buffetting comes from real winds. Some come from a long way off; Italy’s relative decline began almost 20 years ago but every year production figures go down with respect to Europe, and of course China and the other emerging economies. Last week the OECD reckoned that Italy’s GDP would decline by 0.3% in the third quarter, the only G7 country with negative growth and grow by a miserable 0.1% in the fourth quarter. The World Economic Forum reckons that a real recovery has not begun and puts Italy in 48th place for global competiveness. Economics minister Tremonti preferred the ISTAT figures which are slightly better but not much. Youth unemployment continues to grow. The Minister for Economic Development resigned four months ago and still has not been replaced. As the school year begins, teachers are on the warpath over cuts as are the police. There are plenty of real issues but they are not being faced.
So is Italy once again “enslaved” as Dante lamented 700 years ago? And is Italy a brothel instead of queen of her own provinces?
A new book by a Princeton scholar argues that Italy is very much the brothel. In La libertà dei servi (Anticorpi, Laterza 2010), Maurizio Viroli says that Italy has succeeded “… in the political experiment of transforming, without violence, a democratic republic into a court which has at the centre a feudal lord surrounded by a plethora of courtesans admired and envied by a multitude of people with a servile spirit”.
Rigoletto cursed the courtesans with his wonderful aria “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata!” but today it is the courtesans who are in control. Even Fedele Confaloniere, probably Berlusconi’s best friend and closest associate described him in 2004 as “an enlightened despot… a good Ceausescu, but decidedly anomalous as a democratic politician”.
Last week a centre right deputy in Fini’s group accused some of her fellow deputies of having prostituted themselves to get into Parliament. She withdrew the statement immediately but Veronica Lario, Mrs. Berlusconi, and the Fini thinktank “FareFuturo” had made the same point in April last year. The real point though is that the problem is not that some women got into Parliament through a bedroom; it is that men and women, journalists and professionals, have given up their minds and principles rather than their bodies.
So Dante is oft-quoted for good reason.

Dangerous liaisons
There was something profoundly depressing watching the style, expertise and control of the two cavalry squadrons performing on Monday night in Rome. Maybe a hundred horses and riders wheeled charged and feinted in a breathtaking series of manoeuvres, trotting, cantering, galloping in near perfect unison in close order with sabres drawn.
Then the camera cuts to two elderly men for whom the spectacle is being enacted, Muammar Ghedaffi and Silvio Berlusconi. They are enthroned under an awning and the contrast between them and the men and horses they are watching is striking as neither have the style and control of the animals of the carabinieri. It was a show that deserved a more worthy audience.
For the fourth time in just over a year, Ghedaffi was back in Rome. Not surprisingly, most of the comment concentrated on the circus aspect. This time the Libyan Ghedaffi’s inevitable trademark tent was apparently pitched in the embassy grounds. This time, some hundreds of young women were paid to listen to the Colonel extolling the virtues of a rather unorthodox Islam and trying to convert them. The women were somewhere between film extras, “hostesses” and even, according to some accounts “escorts” a very loaded word in today’s Italy.
Whatever they did with Ghedaffi, he outdid his host in numbers at least. Berlusconi’s parties in Palazzo Grazioli are much more limited affairs with a mere twenty or thrity lovelies to listen to his speeches and songs. But their taste in company unites the two men along with the surgical enhancement which both exhibit most visibly.
Aside from the personal foibles, there are very solid national and personal economic interests which they have in common. The visit was meant to celebrate the second anniversary of the 2008 Italo-Libyan treaty. This recompensed Libya for damages incurred under colonial rule (a precedent that Britain and France or even the other colonial powers did not appreciate) but in return gave Italy guarantees of oil and supply contracts and prevented immigrants in transit from reaching Italy. It was a typical piece of realpolitik and no worse than many other deals that Britain and France (or the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Germany) have come to with unsavoury dictators.
The difference is the way that Ghedaffi has been treated by Berlusconi. However embarassing it was for Britain to honour Ceaucescu or Giscard’s France to honour Bokassa, they only did it once, not four times in 15 months. More importantly, neither Queen Elizabeth not Giscard were personal business partners.
Already a year ago, John Hooper in The Guardian pointed out that Berlusconi’s Finivest and Ghedaffi’s Lafitrade were shareholders in the Tunisian media company Quinta Communications..
Before this last visit, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs denied the link which even Berlusconi’s own companies publish “We repeat, there are no relations whatsoever between the prime minister and the business group he created with President Qaddafi or with the Libyan state”.
Apart from the Colonel, Berlusconi has another very equivocal and even closer friendship with Vladimir Putin. Last October, he spent two days with the Russian prime minister accompanied by a single deputy as interpreter. There were no civil servants from the Cabinet office, neither minister for foreign affairs nor economy. No public statements were made as to the nature of the meetings but the business was so important that Berlusconi put off his departure for a day cancelling a longstanding engagement with King Abdullah of Jordan who was on a state visit to Italy. We know about the gas deals with ENI but we have no idea what (if any) private deals Berlusconi has come to. Paolo Guzzanti, a journalist and deputy and formerly loyal supporter, called Berlusconi’s foreign policy “like Louis XIV’s”. With Ghedaffi there are probably no side deals but again we cannot be sure.
Ghedaffi, Putin and Berlusconi are populists who feel that they have an absolute mandate from “the people” and all three make little distinction between what is public and what is their own private interest.
At the risk of being pedantic, it is worth pointing out that Ghedaffi is officially neither head of state or head of government; he was actually introduced as “leader of the revolution”. Berlusconi is head of government but not head of state. Foreign policy is also created out of symbols and theatre and the Ghedaffi Show was excessive by any standards at least in western Europe. It did show once again how Berlusconi’s personal diplomacy trumps Italian interests and good taste.
Next week the Finnish president will be in Rome on a state visit. She is here to promote Finland from Nokia to reindeer ham to Sibelius with Italy for its part wanting to increase economic and cultural relations but I think we can be pretty sure that it will be a low key affair on both sides. She will give a talk at the Accademia de’ Lincei, one of the oldest and most prestigious Italian centres of culture. Her audience will be staid, middle aged and unpaid and she will not be trying to convert anyone. And then there will be a reception at the Finnish Academy with the Italian head of state, President Napolitano. Villa Lante is one of the most beautiful of the foreign academies and the one with the best view but there will be no reindeer cavalcades on the Janiculum.
Quite apart from the impropriety of giving full honours to a dictator and allowing him to use Rome as his own private Disneyland (as the Fini thinktank, FareFuturo said), it is also a dangerous and counterproductive policy even without taking morals and human rights into account. Ghedaffi’s attempts to proseletise have alienated the Vatican and the Northern League neither of which are keen on a Muslim Italy. His treatment of immigrants trying to reach Italy also goes against Church policy. As for the economic interests, given Ghedaffi’s age and the uncertainty of his succession, it might not be good for Italy to be seen to be too close to Ghedaffi personally. And even in the short term, there are many Italian business people and economists who are nervous at the idea of Ghedaffi being a majority shareholder in major Italian financial institutions and businesses.
It is interesting that FareFuturo has explicitly asked Berlusconi to clarify his relationship with both Putin and Ghedaffi. After all, its sponsor, Gianfranco Fini, was foreign minister for a time. This does not bode well for the government’s future – for the moment the warring factions for August have decided that discretion is the better part of valour. Berlusconi does not want to risk a fight with Napolitano in order to call early elections and he does not want to risk being overtaken by Bossi and the League if there are elections. Fini is bruised after the Berlusconi press attacks with more revelations threatened and he is not at all sure that he could fight an elections at short notice. So for the moment, Berlusconi will have his vote of confidence in September but the future is anything but clear.

Salami tactics – Berlusconi’s legacy
Once again the opposition smells blood, Berlusconi’s blood, and hopes grow that the nightmare might be ending. On Friday he came back to Rome to chair a party summit to deal with the Fini secession – he looked terrible; puffy and bloated, visibily overweight and spouting fire and brimstone more in anger than coherence. He no longer has an absolute majority in the Chamber and risks losing it in the Senate too; his party, the PdL is rating 28% in the polls compared to the 38% they won in 2008. But not for the first time, it would be unwise to write off Silvio Berlusconi quite yet (if only because of the lack of serious, organised opposition – but that will be another blog).
But it is the moment to once again try and measure what Berlusconi has done to Italy and how much will remain, whether he leaves the political scene before Christmas or instead wins another general election, does another stint as prime minister and then retires in his eighties after seven years as President.
His declared political aims have always been clear; for the last 16 years, Berlusconi has complained about the prime minister’s lack of power and his persecution by “politically motivated” magistrates. For a decade and a half, he has tried to build his own executive powers based on the “sovereignty of the people” expressed through their elected leader. As such he is as he famously said “anointed by the people”, a latterday and supposedly democratic absolute monarch. But it hasn’t happened; there has been no cathartic, revolutionary change either in the written constitution or even, notwithstanding a landslide of remarks by Berlusconi’s spokespeople over the last few days, in the unwritten constitution.
His other declared political aims include introducing business “freedom” and reducing the role and weight of the state. But there has been no Thatcherite revolution either but this is more because he is actually not that interested in a real free market.
His undeclared aims were and still are to protect himself from criminal prosecution and to benefit his own businesses. In these, he has largely succeeded at least for himself. With minor exceptions, he has never been convicted of any crime; either by decriminalising the action (false accounting) or by using delaying tactics. His many charges have been dropped either because the action is no longer a crime or because the statute of limitations has come in. Despite laws to help some of them, his friends and associates have not been so lucky. The co-founder of the PdL, Dell’Utri has just been sentenced to 7 years for mafia-related crimes by the Appeal Court. His longtime lawyer Cesare Previti was convicted to seven and a half years for bribing a lawyer; his English lawyer, Mills also has an Appeal Court sentence for perjury. His brother Paolo has been in goal and his company’s chief accountant Sciascia was also convicted. Berlusconi has needed all his wiles to avoid his own conviction.
On the material benefit, his first government in 1994 passed a law within a month of taking office which gave his companies a €129m tax write off. This year Mondadori benefited from another bill specifically aimed at the giant publisher.
But whoever succeeds Berlusconi is unlikely to have the same problems with the criminal law or possess the same wealth. The lasting effects of his personalisation of politics has already taken effect in the wider privatisation of both the criminal law and material benefit as Marco Travaglio has catalogued in his recent book Ad personam. This lists measures which have given material or legal advantage to friends and followers on the left and right, a change which is expensive to the exchequer and debases the law.
Even more insidious and dangerous are the effects on the fabric of Italian democracy. Six years ago, Paul Ginsborg wrote that some reforms “designed to change the very character of Italy’s democracy and its fragile balance of powers are forging ahead. The autonomy of the magistrates is in the process of being destroyed. The devolution envisaged by Bossi will create a series of regional baronies. The composition of the Constitutional Court is to be changed. The powers of the premier are to be greatly increased, so as to establish his ascendancy not just over parliament but, if need be, over his own majority as well” (Silvio Berlusconi. Television, Power and Patrimony 2004: 182).
It is testimony to the strength of Italian democracy that magistrates continue to investigate Berlusconi and other politicians, that Italy has not been divided up into a neo-mediæval collection of fiefs and that a year ago the Constitutional Court was again able to declare immunity from criminal charges for the prime minister to be unconstitutional.
In 2002, the Milan prosecuter and leader of the “Clean Hands” investigation, Francesco Saverio Borrelli, retired and in his final speech exhorted his colleagues to “resist, resist, resist”. Since then, they have fought hard and long and certainly prevented the final end of the rule of law. But they and the other powers which make up Italian democracy have been forced to retreat.
Unable to overcome democratic pluralism with a frontal attack, Berlusconi has taken his cue from one of Italy’s most famous products and uses salame tactics. He has sliced away at Italian polyarchy, the word coined by the great scholar of democracy, Robert Dahl.
Before Ginsborg’s remarks, Italian pluralism had been reduced by Berlusconi’s concentration of political and media power. Since then it has been further reduced by an electoral law in which parliamentarians are wholly beholden to their parties and not to their electorate. The supposedly independent authorities meant to monitor broadcasting, privacy and so on, have been made even more toothless by pressure from the majority in Parliament and by Berlusconi himself. Most dangerous is the reduction in the independent power of the magistrature’s governing body, the High Council of the Magistrature (and this with the connivence of the opposition). Both the print media and television have been very largely muzzled apart from Berlusconi’s own family media which on the contrary have been unleashed in vicious campaigns against all opposition from the Bishops’ Conference daily editor, Dino Boffo, to the Chamber Speaker, Gianfranco Fini.
Which brings us back to politics today. Over the next month or so, there will be various battles royal over which slice of Italian pluralism will be cut away. Will Giorgio Napolitano give up the presidential prerogative to dissolve Parliament in the face of Berlusconi’s barrage calling for elections? Will Fini and his supporters maintain some independence in Parliament or will they be forced to eat humble pie? Will Berlusconi be able to start the reforms that Ginsborg listed in 2004, above passing a constitutional amendement giving himself immunity?
Power in Italy has already shifted massively to the executive and has left the legislature, the judiciary, civil society and the media much weaker than in 1994. We are in a crucial phase in which Berlusconi could succeed slice by slice in his design of a “populist democracy” or in which those inspired by Borrelli’s resistance might instead slow the process down.

This is a summary of a paper which I will give at the Conference Group on Italian Politics (Congrips) session at the American Political Science Association’s annual conference this year in Washington DC 2-5 September.

Bards and storytellers – summer entertainment
It would be nice at Ferragosto when all of Italy stops not to talk about the Prime Minister for once, but even around 15 August, it is difficult to avoid him. Going to the theatre is normally an entertainment and nothing more, but this year there is a storyteller who makes opposition to Berlusconi into an evening out.
Italy’s summer shows are justly famous and their settings are spectacular. You can see grand opera in the Verona arena, baroque opera in a Tuscan garden or Greek comedies in Syracuse. Goran Bregovic performs in summer arenas as does Bob Dylan and even the Jethro Tull. There is experimental dance and music on the Janiculum in Rome and 1950s jazz under castle walls in the Marches. Last year, Roberto Benigni kept thousands entranced in a Florence square simply reciting a 700 year old poem. But the poem was the Divine Comedy and Benigni is the quintessence of Tuscan wit and culture.
The variety is almost infinite but the most unlikely and unusual has to be a lone journalist sitting on a stage without props just telling a story. This is Marco Travaglio, the man who more than anyone else personifies opposition to Berlusconi.
On a summer evening, more than 2,000 people paid €25 to sit in the Roman theatre of Ostia to listen to Travaglio explaining Silvio Berlusconi’s rise to power. It was a throwback to simpler times when people gathered in a square or a field and listened to well-known stories or fables. The audience knew the characters and like an English Christmas panto, cheered the heros and booed the villains. Since everyone knows the main points of the narrative, there was little surprise but since no one knows the detail that Travaglio can muster, there were always gasps of disbelief as we learnt or were reminded of the sheer extragavance of the tale unfolding.
For rank improbability, the Berlusconi Saga competes well with Il Trovatore except that every word of the script comes from judicial proceedings. There is also more than a passing resemblance to a Dante reading as the Comedy (especially the Inferno) is a biting comment on the politics and society of 14th C Italy. Only one other contemporary, I think, compares directly to Travaglio; Marco Paolini, an actor-narrator who began some years ago with an acerbic rendering of his native Veneto, Profondo Nord, and then went on to narrate some of Italy’s worst mysteries and disasters, the Vajont dam overflow on 1962 with its negligence, death and cover-up; the downing of the Itavia DC9 near Ustica in 1979 with its death and international obfuscation. These are grand dramas accurately and movingly rendered. But Paolini uses props and takes on parts. Travaglio’s quality is to be able to concentrate Italy’s present disaster into powerful drama just with words.
He is one of the country’s best investigative journalists, a quiet and polite Piedmontese who never raises his voice and, a rarity in public life today, rarely uses expletives. His devastating lines are delivered with a smile rather than a snarl and the terrible truths come with wit and humour. He has produced more than a dozen books on Italy’s political scandal and despite being accused of being a Jacobin leftie, began his career with the great conservative Italian journalist, Indro Montanelli who Travaglio admires and often quotes. Not so long ago, some of the left accused him of being on the right. Apart from the occasional theatre, Travaglio writes an editorial for Il Fatto Quotidiano six days a week and a half hour webcast on Mondays called Passaparola (“pass it on!”) and last year at least, was part of the regular cast of Annozero, one of the RAI political talk shows that Berlusconi would like to close.
Although Berlusconi was obviously the centre of the show, he was certainly not the only subject. Marcello Dell’Utri one of the founders of Forza Italia who was recently given a seven year gaol sentence for mafia association figured prominently but the centre-left was not left out of the line of fire. Massimo D’Alema was given a lambasting, much to the crowd’s delight as was Bersani and other centre-left figures, only Di Pietro was not included.
It was a great evening – just walking around Ostia is a special pleasure even without a show. Leaving the theatre along the umbrella pine avenue, I have no doubt that we all felt particularly virtuous at having done our righteous bit in supporting the opposition to Berlusconi. Until… until… I realised that the whole business had been a damning symbol of Berlusconi’s ultimate victory. He is the ultimate impresario and he had succeeded in reducing the opposition to a side show performing for the converted far from the places where real decisions are made and opinions formed: the media, the demonstrations, even the emasculated parliament. Travaglio’s verve had not changed a single person’s opinion.
On the real stage, the allegations of sleaze against Fini and his brother in law continue to dominate not only the Berlusconi media while allegations of conflicts of interest and money laundering by magistrates and the Bank of Italy against Denis Verdini take third or fourth place. Verdini is one of the PdL’s three coordinators. And then everyone is limbering up to fight over early elections. Berlusconi and Bossi are playing good cop/bad cop with Berlusconi’s people arguing that the de facto constitution says that “the sovereign people” should decide if the present government no longer has a majority. Bossi and his people threaten demonstrations and secession if they don’t have elections. President Napolitano is fighting to maintain the president’s power to dissolve parliament. Even before the end of August, the battle lines are well drawn.

To vote or not to vote
In the mid-90s I used to teach a course on Italian politics every two years in the spring and from ’92 to ’96 the powers that were very kindly gave me a general election to illustrate my course with. After a decade of stability, we seem to be returning to the more usual confusion and continuous jockeying for small slices of power.
There is a pretty good chance that Italians will go to the polls again next spring and there is a small chance that it might even be as soon as November (the republic has never had an autumn election so it’s unlikely, but Umberto Bossi is pressing for it and Berlusconi loves campaigning and is very good at it).
The drama, as ever in politics, is part issues and part personal. Except that in Berlusconi’s Italy, most issues are also personal so once again, despite a major economic crisis and plenty of other only slightly less pressing problems, we are still talking about one man and his conflicts of interest.
The immediate bones of contention, as most of you know already, is the split between Berlusconi and the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Gianfranco Fini. Initially Fini was joined by 33 deputies who formed a new group (not “party”) called Futuro e Libertà (Fli) and was then followed by Chiara Moroni, the youngest deputy in the Chamber but highly symbolic in the present context as she is the daughter of a man who committed suicide after being accused of corruption in the first “Clean Hands” investigation in the early ‘90s. She might have been expected to defend alleged corruptors but she supports Fini in his campaign for “legality”.
The division where the 34 Finiani declared themselves was a vote of no confidence on the PdL minister, Giacomo Caliendo, accused of being part of the new secret masonic lodge, the so-called P3. Di Pietro tabled the motion which was supported by his group, Italia dei Valori (IdV) and the Democratic Party (PD) and rejected by 299 members of the government a long way short of the 316 majority. Fini’s people abstained and the motion was defeated but since last week, it is clear that the PdL no longer commands an absolute majority.
That leaves three possibilities: immediate elections (November), a transitional “technocratic” government, and finally, a limping lame duck continuation of the present government.
The first is supported by Bossi and the Northern League who reckon they would make a killing in any elections at the moment. The former centre-left mayor of Venice, Massimo Cacciari reckoned dismally that the Lega would win 50% of the vote north of the Appenines. This is probably Cacciari playing an exaggerated Cassandra, but she was right after all; the Lega will do well because it manages to present itself as an anti-system party at the same time as being in power; they have good local organisation and a clear programme. I’ll do a blog on their biggest issue “federalism” next month. Di Pietro too would be happy to move to the hustings because IdV is the only intransigent and clear opposition to Berlusconi and would certainly take a good portion of the disgruntled PD voters. Naturally Berlusconi is raring to go and has just launched a pre-election campaign to that Italians will “understand what the government has achieved”. No peace from politics even in August.
An interim government would bring back echos of Dini in 1995 but too much has changed since then for there to be a repetition with Tremonti playing Dini’s. First of all there is a different president and the choice between elections and a new government is the president’s choice, not the prime minister’s. Oscar Luigi Scalfaro is a tough and honest old fashioned Piedmontese Christian Democrat. As president he refused to allow Cesare Previti to become minister of Justice – Previti was under investigation for corruption and was later convicted. When the Lega withdrew support for Berlusconi’s government, Scalfaro insisted on offering Berlusconi’s finance minister Lamberto Dini the possibility of forming an interim government, which he did. The present president, Giorgio Napolitano is not made of the same stuff. He prefers to mediate behind the scenes rather than stand up to Berlusconi who has himself learnt much over the last 16 years. He knows that if he refused a request for early elections “Berlusconi would go nuclear” as a diplomat friend said last week. The nuclear option would mean unleashing all his media – the five television channels (three Mediaset and two RAI) and the two newspapers which are presently savaging Fini (Il Giornale and Libero but more of that next week). Only the PD is really in favour of this option as they are divided and disorganised and too pusillanimous to fight an election at the moment. But the “transitional government” is hardly an option as it would mean them getting into bed with Tremonti who they have constantly attacked for his austerity budget which would make them look very inconsistent. And that presupposes that Tremonti would be willing to play Dini’s 1995 role.
The final option would be for the present government to carry on until there is another crunch time with Fini. Government spokesmen say they will fight on the economy, the South, federalism and justice.
The last two are the most controversial. Fini has always been against allowing too much devolution or giving too much power to the Lega. Justice includes a constitutional amendment to give immunity to the prime minister, putting a best-by date on criminal trials; three, two and one year for the three different levels, but without changing procedure. In practice all but the simplest trials would be dropped. They also want to reform the magistrature’s self-governing body, the High Council of the Magistrature and reduce its powers. The PdL would also like to see the bill which limits phone taps passed without being watered down. Each one of these issues could push Fli to vote against the government but at the moment at least, they are not ready to fight an election.

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A die is cast.
After almost 17 years as Berlusconi’s bridesmaid, Gianfranco Fini has finally decided that he has had enough. In a very stormy week, the unlikely cooperation between Fini and Berlusconi came formally to an end with Fini and his followers being expelled from the Popolo della Libertà and setting up their own group.
It looked like a catharsis, something like a make or break, Rubicon-crossing moment. But for all the high drama and the many calls I got on Thursday and Friday asking if this was going to be the end of Berlusconi, I think we are in for a long haul.
The apparent bone of contention is “legality”. The last straw was last week when Fini’s most vocal spokesman, Fabio Granata said that there had been government involvement in the mafia killing of prosecutor Paolo Borsellino in 1992. Granata is also deputy chair of the Parliamentary Anti-mafia committee which made the remark all the more telling. Berlusconi faithfuls demanded that Granata be disciplined and maybe suspended from the party even though the institutional mechanisms are not actually in place. But the fine print of party rules did not matter; Berlusconi had decided that he had had enough and the dissidents should be expelled. They too realised that the time had come to leave.
There have also been disagreements over some personalised pro-Berlusconi legislation; the intercept bill which would limit media freedom to publish court proceedings and investigaors’ possibilities of tapping phones and some proposals to reform the justice system.
Underlying the differences on specific issues is the Finiani’s contention that there is a total lack of pluralism in the PdL. Berlusconi has frequently said that there is no space for factions or subdivisions in the PdL and after the split, Fini’s thinktank “FareFuturo” carried an editorial calling Berlusconi’s move “Operation Baygon” (and insecticide) to “rid the party of an infestation of pluralism”. Fini himself accused Berlusconi of wanting to run the party as if he were CEO. Certainly Berlusconi has never appreciated discussion and debate far less, open disagreement. Even his court jester, Giuliano Ferrara, editor of one of the family papers, Il Foglio, compared Berlusconi to Kim Il Sung. Once again, for all his rhetorical anti-communism, Berlusconi acts like some communist party boss than the leader of a “liberal” western party which he purports to support. The other family papers have been unleashed on Fini calling him a traitor, a loser and corrupt because there are some unanswered questions about his brother-in-law’s house in Monte Carlo.
At first count, Fini seems to have the numbers to bring the government down. It looks as if he has 33 deputies and 10 senators. With 342 centre-right deputies until last week, it would take only 27 to go below the 316 necessary for a majority
This means that in controversial divisions, every single government deputy will have to turn up and vote in person. In Berlusconi’s last government, the practice of one deputy voting for a colleague was notorious. They were called “piano players” because they had to stretch to press the voting buttons on two or three separate desks. This is difficult now with digital voting but quite impossible with Fini in the chair.
In practice, this means that at the moment, the government does not have a reliable majority. One commentator has said that there is already a “virtual crisis” so that Berlusconi could go to President Napolitano and ask for a dissolution and elections in the autumn. Or he could wait until a controversial vote in the autumn, either on the federal issue or on justice where Fini would not support the government, and then ask for elections in spring. Berlusconi loves elections and is very good at campaigning. He also knows that Fini will need time to build up an organisation capable of making a mark in a national campaign. The centre-left is in a mess and tomorrow, Monday 2 August, the leaders of the two parties, Bersani and Di Pietro will meet to try and work out what they will do if they do have to face elections.
Or Berlusconi could try and rebuild a majority. In order to get back onto an even keel, he needs about a dozen new supporters so there is the presumption that he will have to go on a shopping spree before the next key vote sometime in September. Pierferdinando Casini and his UDC were approached last month; Casini said that of course he would not betray his electors but the promise of a ministry and the excuse of “saving the country from chaos during the economic crisis” might just persuade him. Francesco Rutelli once a Radical and then for a time leader of the Democrats of the Left has now moved so far into the centre that he is ripe for the picking. Then there is some lowhanging fruit in the PD in the religious centre. Berlusconi disappointed the AC Milan fans by not splashing out on new talent for the coming season but he will have to be more proactive with his party.
Both Casini and Rutelli have reiterated over the weekend that they will not join the government but there is that peculiar Italian institution “external support” that could be at least a stopgap solution for Berlusconi. A group or single deputies do not become part of the government but they vote for government measures “from the outside”.
The prospects are very interesting indeed. If Berlusconi does put together a new majority, there could be a government re-shuffle with the Fini ministers replaced by more faithful folk. Or, if Berlusconi asks for elections and Napolitano refuses, there could be a technical transition government; Tremonti is already straining at the leash and cannot wait to get into Palazzo Chigi. Or we could have elections. But whatever happens, we have entered a new and declining phase of “Berlusconi-ism”. But Fini has crossed a Rubicon even though he is unlikely to become emperor in the near future but he might just end up knifed by some of his erstwhile friends.

James,
As I recall, by 1995 the received wisdom in anti-mafia circles (eg Pino Arlacchi, Leoluca Orlando, the Milan Pool) was that the high profile killings of Falcone and Borsellino and the unmasking of Andreotti as the Sicilian Mafia's reference point in Rome following Salvo Lima's assassination (and the decline of his tendenza in the shortly to implode Christian Democrat Party) was a strategic turning point. The Mafia had overreached itself and the resultant backlash meant that it would be obliged to renounce the periodic murder of public officials and its power to impose the pizzo would progressively diminish. Events like the arrest of Toto Riina after decades or latitanza suggested that this analysis might, after all, be true.
Alas, it would seem that such optimism was misplaced. Indeed, to be fair Arlacchi cautioned against premature optimism the last time I saw him. And reports after Berlusconi first came to power that Forza Italia aimed to assume the vacant role of political reference point in Rome for the Mafia's interests, reports that pointed out that Mafia money built Milano Due and Berlusconi's gardener (Mangano) was a mafioso, all suggested that Il Gattopardo would again be proved right, that everything would change in order that everything should remain the same.
The latest wire tap law would appear to show that schizophrenia about the mafia is alive and well in Italy and currently living in the Palazzo Chigi.
Regards
David (Colvin)

On Fini: Comparing Fini to Berlinguer is a bit of a heresy. But that's just my opinion.

On Casini: he clearly stated he doesn't want to be part of the maggioranza. Do you think he might change his mind? Isn't the PdL and the Lega enough to govern?

On the "end" of the Berlusconi era: Is it really that over? I don't know if the government might actually fall (I remember in the years 2001-2006 we went close to it many times, but unfortunately it never really happened), but what shocks me the most is that what is happening now in the Parliament is definitely worse than the whole Mani Pulite scandal. I am referring not only to the illegality issues and the Borsellino case you mention, but also the scandal on the apartments. Yet, people are not responding to it. Sure, I was too young to either participate or remember people throwing coins to Craxi and yelling at him "would you like these as well???", but from what I have heard, read, and imagined, it seemed like those years were of actual revolution. Now, everyone is upset, but no one is doing much about it. A revolution is " a fundamental change in political organization; especially: the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed". Since the people are not protesting that much, and demanding new election, but rather there is a small little tiny chance that the government might change to a transitional one with Tremonti (e anche su di lui ce ne sarebbero da dire parecchie) and Draghi, well as an Italian I just cannot believe that THIS is a period of political change. Either way, FINGERS CROSSED!!!
Alessandro Batazzi

Granata, in addition to being a Fini group MP, is deputy chief of the Parliament Anti-Mafia Commission. In this capacity Granata also protested that official police protection for the super-grass, Gaspare Spatuzza, who has given evidence in three ongoing trials (Palermo, Caltanissetta, Florence) has just been eliminated, endangering the life of this crucial witness.
Judy Harris

“Maybe this time…”
Even in these dog days of July there is febrile concern about the stability of the government and by implication the political architecture of the last 16 years. If Berlusconi goes as prime minister, the argument goes, Berlusconi-ism will collapse too and maybe this time, Italy will have sound government. There is talk of a “transitional government” even by right wing papers like Il Tempo which last week carried a front page article comparing the virtues of economics minister Giulio Tremonti and Bank of Italy president, Mario Draghi as possible successors.
Berlusconi’s most faithful mastiff, the editor of Il Giornale, one of the family papers, Vittorio Feltri also reckons that the government has a short best-by date on it though he is looking at a reshuffle in which Berlusconi re-establishes complete control over the party by getting rid of Fini and his people and maybe bringing in Pierferdinando Casini’s post-Christian Democrat UDC.
The Fini opposition has become more vocal as the suggestion grows that parts of the government had a hand in the murder of the anti-mafia judge Paolo Borsellino in 1992. One of the supergrasses maintains that the foundation of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia was the result of negotiations with Provenzano and Riina’s mafia. Last week in Palermo, the Finiano deputy, Fabio Granata said that “there are parts of the government who are obstructing investigations on the Via D’Amelio attack” (where Borsellino and his escorts were killed). Rather than being asked to expand, Granata risks being disciplined by his own party and maybe expelled. Fini himself has repeatedly address the problem of “legality” and is being compared to the Communist leader Enrico Berlinguer who raised the issue of “the moral question” in the ‘70s.
The Popolo della Libertà is beginning to look like Blair’s early New Labour where everyone was supposed to be “on message”. With Blair before ’97 it was a question of winning the election but today despite his huge majority in parliament, Berlusconi brooks no internal opposition and considers any criticism a form of lèse majesté.
Certainly the structure is creaking very audibly. The two bills which have to pass before the recess are creating serious fissures in the country. The austerity measure is before Parliament this week and the intercept bill might get through the Chamber before deputies go to the seaside. I looked at them a fortnight ago and will have another go when the huffing and puffing is over (if one article of the intercept bill passes, then I might have to stop this blog – but more on that later, if it passes). Denis Verdini, the PdL coordinator and others accused of being part of the secret lobby dubbed “P3” might have to step down following the stream of resignations over the last few months. The opposition Il Fatto talks openly of “the last days of Berlusconi”.
But Fini’s supporters are not enough to bring the government down; Berlusconi is reported to have said that “Fini can fight a guerriglia war but not a pitched battle” and he is right. The bills will most likely be passed with votes of confidence which the courtier-parliamentarians cannot betray. And even if Verdini’s head rolls, the boss (or “sultan” as he is now frequently called) is still firmly in control of the party, parliament and a good part of the media so his time has probably not yet come.
Italy, though, seems to have physiological cycles and we are definitely coming to the end of one, if only because of Berlusconi’s age.
Over the 20th century, Italy has gone through something approaching a cultural and political revolution every generation or every 20 or so years. There have always been internal reasons for the revolutions but the external stimuli have usually been a major international event which triggered the internal change. Each time, the revolutionaries felt they were refounding Italy and presumed that “maybe this time” the country would realise its true potential, morally, politically and economically. All countries change, especially under the pressure of war or massive economic change; Italy’s changes have almost never been reforms, they have been revolutions with millenarist and utopian plans. Like Sally Bowles in “Cabaret”, they sing “Maybe this time” and like Sally Bowles, it always turns out to be the wrong man.
The first world war destroyed most of Italy’s economy and much of its social cohesion; even though Italy came out of the war on the winning side and with increased territory, the result was presented as “the mutilated victory”. There was serious social strife for four years until Mussolini took over with the promise of renewing the country and giving Italy its rightful position in the world.
Twenty three years later, Italy was politically, militarily and economically bankrupt and once again seriously divided. The anti-fascist resistance provided the necessary underpinning to support the new Italy. The new Italy was a republic and a democracy and would realise all the dreams of those who had fought fascism and nazism.
In 1968-69, the pressures were hardly as violent as in 1918 or 1945 and the devastation was obviously minimal compared to the world wars, but the hopes of the “sessantottini” were hardly less than in the previous changes. The trigger was France’s ’68 and the US anti-war movement but the underlying reasons were a profound dissatisfaction by large sections of mostly young, mostly left-wing Italians in the clientelistic, spoils sharing Christian Democrat and Socialist governments. They also wanted to share in the social freedoms that the rest of western Europe were developing.
The most recent revolution in 1991-94 cost even less blood (in Italy at least); this one was triggered externally by the fall of the Berlin wall which removed the institutional prejudice against the Communist Party. For the first time in 40 years, Italian government could alternate between left and right. The USSR and the PCI no longer existed so a non-communist left could form and even take power. Internally, Italy’s major debt had to be faced if Italy was to join the single European currency. That debt had been greatly increased by the massive corruption which marked the previous decade. The tangentopoli and mani pulite prosecutions were the opportunity for Italians to rebel and this time, they felt that they could have another start, a clean beginning. Instead, the result was Berlusconi who has dominated the past decade and a half both in power and opposition and certainly not under the aegis of legality.
Today we are moving probably slowly, towards some sort of endgame but it is far from clear what the trigger will be or what sort of utopian dream will come out of the collapse.

The second half of this blog come from a paper I gave at the Political Science Association in Edinburgh in March; anyone who wants to see more, should go to "Dogs that bark in the night" Section 4. I would also like to thank Umut Korkut, Jim Newell, Maurizio Carbone and the other colleagues who made very useful comments then.
Comments are welcome; please let me know if they may be posted on the blog and whether they should be with or without attribution; do let me know if you do not want to receive the blog and let me know of others who do want to receive it.

Thank you for pointing out the irony of the Berlusconi government's boasting of its successes in arresting the foot soldiers of the Mafia even as so many of his party leaders and even members of the government are either under indictment or, like Senator Dell'Utri, convicted of Mafia association, a crime introduced into Italian legislation under pressure from the U.S. Incidentally, whereas Chamber of Deputies president Gianfranco Fini agreed to attend today's commemoration of the slain magistrate Paolo Borsellino in Palermo, Berlusconi's Justice Minister Angelino Alfano declined.
Judy Harris

It seems like yesterday (in fact seventeen years ago) that we were passionately discussing the irruption on to the Italian political scene of Silvio 'Par Condicio' Mediaset and his lovelies. Not in my wildest dreams would I have predicted that a decade and a half later he would still be around, media empire intact, his mani demonstrably sporchi yet still making the political weather. He has seen most if not all his many enemies off. What a bravura performance. The man is indestructible; even a carefully aimed model of the Milan Duomo served to boost his popularity rather than shatter his image. While his virility seems not to have flagged, quite the contrary. I imagine that he commands good odds on succeeding Napolitano as President of the Republic.
All of which makes me feel deeply disillusioned about the Italian political scene and any lingering or residual pretensions to understand it. Against this background, your blog arrives like manna to a starving man. I look forward to many more - and to seeing you in Rome one of these days.
David Colvin

Schizophrenia about mafia
At the same time as the prime minister says that he is defeating mafia and is actually arresting hundreds and confiscating millions of eurosworth of property, one of his senators calls a mafioso a hero and a minister is indicted for links with the camorra. Evidence emerges that government and mafia were negotiating even as the mafia committed its most spectacular murder, of Giovanni Falcone in 1992. Is all this schizophrenia?
In his third term as prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi has turned his focus on one of Italy’s most intractable problems – organised crime. In his speeches from 2000 to 2006, he used the word mafia only fourteen times, eight of which were metaphorical; it was not an issue high on his agenda. Since his re-election, he and his ministers have come hammered away on what they reckon are the government’s success in fighting mafia. In March, Berlusconi went as far as to declare confidently that “In three years, we will defeat mafia, camorra and ndrangheta”. Some claim. He repeated the promise last week retreating slightly from “will defeat” to “it is a priority” but never shy of superlatives, he said that “no other government has done better than us”.
The Minister of the Interior, Roberto Maroni has been less improbable in his statements but he has said that the techniques used against the camorra are a “model of excellence” and can be used against the other groups. He claimed government credit for arresting 300 members of the ndrangheta in Calabria and Lombardy last week and the following day for launching a government agency to manage goods confiscated from organised crime.
There is no doubt that organised crime is one of Italy’s biggest issues, one which affects citizens’ security, the growth of the economy and even the state’s own role in controlling territory. In four regions, the mafia in Sicily, the ‘ndrangheta in Calabria, the camorra in Campania and the Sacred United Crown in Apulia, organised crime conditions public order, politics and the economy. They have powerful influence in other regions, particularly around Rome in Latium and around Milan in Lombardy. Although there are major differences in the structures and methods of the four groups, they all have a number of features in common.
Long before MBA students were being taught to “think glocal”, the gangsters were doing it. They acted locally and thought globally and have now honed that business model very effectively. The local element is the protection racket which allows each group to control territory socially and economically; it also means that they have to develop mutually beneficial links with local politics. Extortion generates some cash but is not the biggest source of income. At the same time they have developed national and international links providing legal and illegal goods and services. Recent estimates reckon that the four together have a turnover of €90-100 bn. or 6-7.5% gdp. Bank of Italy governor, Mario Draghi has argued that organised crime not only stifles economic development but has accentuated the effects of the crisis in the south.
So there is every reason to fight organised crime strenuously and the ndrangheta arrests and camorra confiscations are certainly positive steps, but despite these undoubted successes, there is an irony in Berlusconi’s boasts.
This week will see a bitter parliamentary battle over a government bill limiting the use of telephone taps. The bill is strongly opposed by both police and magistrates as a serious impediment to investigations. One of the Calabrians arrested last week complained that their biggest fear was the phone tap and the last mafia chief arrested, Bernardo Provenzano famously only used pizzini, notes on paper to avoid electronic surveillance. The bill is hardly a message of toughness on organised crime especially when resources to the law enforcement agencies are being cut in the austerity budget which is also before parliament.
Even more contradictory is the stream of evidence that far from being government’s antagonist, mafia, camorra and ndrangheta are government’s allies or at least very close to numbers of politicians at all levels.
The minister of justice, Angelino Alfano and the president of the Senate Renato Schifani started as lawyers in Palermo; it is worth remembering that Italian advocates are not surgically neutral QCs who happily jump from defence to prosecution. Years ago, Schifani was in partnership with two men who later went on to be convicted for mafia crimes. He sued the journalist who broke this news and lost. Alfano too has been accused of social and possibly electoral connections with mafiosi.Neither Alfano nor Schifani though have been convicted or even indicted but political responsibility is not criminal responsibility.
Much more serious is the case of Marcello Dell’Utri, friend of Berlusconi’s for almost 50 years, business associate for 40 and political partner for 20. He has just been convicted on appeal to 7 years in gaol for external association with mafia. This was a reduction from the 9 years handed down by the court of first instance. Importantly, the Court of Appeal said that the links with mafia had stopped in 1992. Dell’Utri celebrated the reduction and his apparent cessation of links. He called Vittorio Mangano a “hero” because he had not turned state’s evidence. Mangano was the mafioso with whom Dell’Utri and Berlusconi had had most constant contact.
Quite apart from the criminal liability proven in court, there is once again, almost no consciousness of the political responsibility of maintaining a close working relationship with a convicted mafia killer. Berlusconi employed Mangano for two year as part of his household staff.
For the future, the undersecretary for the economy who resigned last week, Nicola Cosentino face trial for his links with the camorra. When he was appointed, his indictments were known.
For the past, there is mounting evidence that the mafia was closely involved in the foundation of Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia in 1992-94 (hence Dell’Utri’s celebration that the court had excluded any mafia association after 1992). Some mafiosi who have turned state’s evidence have already named Berlusconi and Forza Italia arguing that the bomb campain carried out by mafia at the time only stopped because a political arrangement had been reached.
The reconstruction of facts seems to work. The mafia’s old reference, Giulio Andreotti, was removed by killing his man in Palermo (Salvatore Lima March ’92) and Giovanni Falcone the day before Andreotti was due to be elected President (May ’92). Then Falcone’s close friend and colleague was killed (the anniversary is today 19 July). The mafia then moved out of Sicily and used terrorist tactics “on the continent”; bombs in Milan, Florence and Rome (May-July ’93). They put a bomb at a Rome football match in December but the detonator failed and they only called off a repeat because a deal had been struck with Forza Italia. The most significant source is Massimo Ciancimino, the son of Palermo’s most notorious mafia mayor, Vito. He obviously has his own agenda and is releasing his information with the care of a research chemist with a pipette. He has stated that Provenzano produced a list of twelve domands to a future collaborator; these included the abolition of a special tough anti-mafia law and a new Sicilian party. Some conditions were indeed accepted by both left and right wing government.
Whether Ciancimino’s evidence is accepted remains to be seen but the original sin of Berlusconi’s possible links with mafia is well documented. In the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, his holding companies received investments for billions of lire (one calculation by Marco Travaglio reckons it is the equivalent of €300m today). On a single day in April 1977, lire 8 bn. in cash (approx €30m today), according to a Bank of Italy inspector seconded to the Palermo court. Berlusconi has never explained the provenance of that and other investments. Given Dell’Utri’s mafia association ascertained by the Appeal Court and Berlusconi’s close relationship with Mangano, the suspicion must be that it was recycled mafia money. But we will almost certainly never know for sure.
There is a stark contrast between Berlusconi’s absurd claim that he would defeat mafia in three years and the dour existential hope expressed by Giovanni Falcone shortly before he was killed by Cosa Nostra “mafia is a human expression and like all human activities it has a beginning and will have an end”. Berlusconi’s claims would be comic if it were not for the dark side of his own and his close associates’ links with mafia. This is not schizophrenia – it is a desperate and tardy attempt to bury a past which will not go away.

The Grumbling Hive
Three hundred years Bernard de Mandeville looked at English society and argued that its corruption was in fact beneficial; greed and self-interest generated public benefits according to Mandeville and the sub-title to his satire, The Grumbling Hive was Knaves turned honest.
At the moment, the hive that is Italy grumbles loudly despite the exceptional heat and the prospects of the imminent August break. There are even some indications of a knave or two being forced to turn honest. But there the comparison ends; far from producing public benefits, the corruption is more akin to a very present and very practical problem. It is like the Gulf oil spill – neverending, inchoate and polluting in ways which even hardened observers find difficult to manage and understand. And despite the continuous protestations by the authorities that everything is under control, the ugly mess spews out relentlessly.
Meanwhile, of course, life goes on. On Tuesday a group of University of Minnesota students asked me the two key questions that foreigners and Italians alike have been asking from more than 16 years: why is Berlusconi in power? And how long is he going to last? I will try and answer both, but first the week.
In April 2009, the L’Aquila earthquake provided Berlusconi with a perfect opportunity to show his real organisational qualities. The survivors were given shelter, food and clothing in a way which Italian emergency authorities had seldom done before. Apart from the immediate response, Berlusconi made great promises about rebuilding L’Aquila; he revelled in the media coverage and crowd adulation. He added the futuristic fireman’s helmet to his already wide repertory of headgear. With every visit, the Aquilani and the rest of the world were told that it was Berlusconi who was responsible for the reconstruction. A year and a half later, that concentration on one man as L’Aquila’s saviour has come back to haunt him. A highly critical documentary Draquila by Berlusconi’s best impersonator, Sabina Guzzanti is doing the rounds showing how incompetence, corruption and lack of direction are still the rule. The head of the Civil Protection authority, Guido Bertolaso, is under investigation for giving contracts to his friends and the Aquilani themselves are on the warpath. The tax exemptions which in other earthquakes went on for years until the economic fabric had been rebuilt, were stopped on 1st. July as part of the austerity package and the centre of L’Aquila is still a ghost town and likely to remain so. Last week saw 5,000 Aquilani demonstrating in Rome led by the mayor; because of Berlusconi’s personal involvement they went to his residence in Palazzo Grazioli as well as the Prime Minister’s office in Palazzo Chigi but were stopped by large numbers of police in riot gear. The images of earthquake victims bloodied by police preventing a demonstration in front of the PM’s home was not the sort of media coverage that Berlusconi expected from the earthquake.
The fight between Berlusconi and Chamber of Deputies President Gianfranco Fini twists and turns with Fini ably exploiting his agenda-setting position in the Chamber. An economics undersecretary and regional coordinator of Berlusconi and Fini’s party, the Popolo della Libertà, (PdL), Nicola Cosentino has been accused of links with the most violent camorra gang (the Casalesi) and of setting up a secret pressure group similar to the secret masonic lodge Propaganda 2 (or P2 – the new one has immediately been dubbed “P3”. The new group is alleged to include judges as well as politicians. Fini has not said anything about the merits of the Cosentino case but he challenged Berlusconi by allowing the opposition to table a no confidence motion on Cosentino for next week. His own deputies were threatening to vote with the opposition against Cosentino which would have made the PdL division very, very visible and numerical as well. Fini and Berlusconi were eyeball to eyeball and it was Berlusconi who blinked. Yesterday, Cosentino resigned as undersecretary.
The P3 story is still unclear but Berlusconi considers it dangerous enough to have called it a story about “four retired loosers” (quattro pensionati sfigati) and to return to his old anathema “Jacobins and justicists” meaning prosecutors and journalists who apply the law overzealously. The language is that of the early ‘90s and we seem poised for a re-run of the corruption trials which brought down the DC and PSI.
But much is very different. The government has a huge majority even if Fini’s people are wavering and for the moment at least there is little serious opposition either in Parliament or among the people.
The austerity budget will go through the Senate today with a vote of confidence (to stop the debate and prevent further amendments) and is due in the Chamber on 26th or 27th. The main opposition comes from the regional governments but they are divided both by party and north/south. The northern regions both left and right are unhappy to have to cut services when they think they have been thrifty but they will not bring the government down. Nor will Fini’s supporters.
The other major bone of contention is the intercept bill, now also criticised by the UN in Geneva’s human rights expert Frank La Rue. At the same time as the Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni was boasting of the government’s success in arresting Calabrian mafiosi, using phone taps, his own government is trying to limit intercepts. The senior antimafia investigator, Piero Grasso, pointed out sarcastically that “the mafiosi’s privacy has been violated”; I will look at Italy’s schizophrenia over organised crime next week.
Berlusconi has said he wants the bill through Parliament before the summer recess but with mounting opposition to it and Fini’s delaying tactics, this is unlikely. So this is another challenge put off.
So what did I tell the Minnesotans on the first question and them and others on the second?
Berlusconi was elected and stays in power first of all because he has succeeded in selling a dream and has been able to renew that dream constantly over the last 16 years. In the early days he played on an exaggerated fear of “communism” whatever that meant then and to a lesser extent he still does. His image endears him to large numbers of Italians who not only forgive him his crude jokes, his verbal and physical groping of young women and his plastic surgery but they admire him for it. And many admire him for his success even if it might be based on recycled mafia money (more on that next week too). And finally, and obviously, in a country where most people get their news from television news (not even the investigations and talk shows), Berlusconi’s control of five of the seven news programmes, as well as three newspapers, one news weekly and the country’s biggest publisher is crucial in presenting his message and reducing negative coverage.
For the second question, is he on his way out? Indeed there are cracks in his edifice; he has lost two ministers and an undersecretary in the last two months and the national party coordinator is wobbling. These are the “knaves turned honest”. Fini showed his power by forcing the Cosentino resignation but he is still a long way from making a bid for power. The Northern League are unhappy as Berlusconi makes overtures to the centrist UDC and cuts the regions’ spending power but again, they are not going to bring th house down. So the austerity package will pass but as always happens its effects will be muted in the (non) implementation. The intercept bill will probably not come to a vote before the recess but if does, there will be enough amendments for Fini’s people to accept the fudge.
All of which leaves B in power. Either god almighty or his physician have a better idea of when he will leave it – and I do not have contact with either. But the hive will continue to grumble.

Showdowns and curtains up (again)
After long silence, I am blogging once again; I hope for all the summer and beyond. There is much to talk about in Italian politics and the difficulty is to know where to start. The medium and longterm questions and analyses can wait until August when (perhaps) there will be less day-to-day drama. So the curtain of my new season goes up on what promises to be a very eventful week.
Berlusconi is back from his South American tour to face a mountain of immediate difficulties. It is going to be a tough week for him and his allies.
Some commentators talk of a possible government crisis but others like Gianfranco Pasquino argue that “Berlusconi wobbles but does not collapse”. Comparisons with the Roman empire abound but likening Berlusconi to Nero or Caligula is too easy; the crises are much more banal but at the same time much more serious. Like many contemporary prime ministers, Berlusconi is facing internal opposition which if not defeated or safely corraled, could bring the government down.
The loudest opposition comes from Gianfranco Fini, president of the Chamber of Deputies, leader of Forza Italia’s former ally Alleanza Nazionale and co-founder of the now single party, the Popolo della Libertà (PdL) and for almost 17 years, potential successor. Fini has always been his own man and has aimed at building a respectable and European Italian right and over the last year or so has made his disagreements with Berlusconi increasingly manifest. In April there was close to a public shouting match at a PdL executive meeting and there have been dozens of indirect clashes. Fini and his supporters argue that the PdL is stronger by having internal debates on topics like immigrant integration or federalism and devolution while Berlusconi wants the PdL to speak with a single voice and to avoid the eternal Italian problem of factions. On top of the genuine political differences, there are striking personal and character differences which add spice and colour to the story.
This week’s bone of contention is a bill to regulate telephone intercepts. The bill reduces police and magistrates’ powers to start and continue bugs; it also reduces media possibility to publish court proceedings and increases penalties for journalists and publishers who do publish. The opposition calls it “the gagging bill” and it has been criticised implicitly by US authorities from the ambassador to the organised crime investigators and explicitly by the OSCE. The government maintains that it safeguards the privacy of people under investigation. Berlusconi has evoked spectres of the Stasi saying that 7 million Italians “could be bugged” while his strongest and normally well-informed critic, the investigative journalist Marco Travaglio, says that “less than 20,000 are legally bugged”.
The bill covers a lot of ground from magistrates’ powers to freedom of the press and it could well be found to be unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court or President Napolitano might decide not to sign it. For his part Fini has merely said that the bill needs more thought and should be put off until September, after the summer recess. It is a not very subtle way of trying to kill the bill without a major clash which is why Berlusconi has insisted that the bill be debated and passed before the recess, possibly with a vote of confidence, the Italian version of the Westminster guillotine.
Berlusconi’s challenge is that Fini and his people stand up, vote and lose and that they then leave the PdL. In Berlusconi’s ideal scenario, Fini would then become an ex-pretender, his bolt well and truly shot.
Another major problem for the government though probably not going to come to a critical head this week, is the budget. The special austerity measure was unveiled almost two months ago when parts of it were even given an unoffical nod from the President. But apart from predictable criticism from the public service unions whose members will bear the brunt of the cuts, there has been concerted opposition from the regional governments including the centre-right ones whose support Berlusconi can ill-afford to lose. They too do not want to have to cut services and most dangerous for Berlusconi, the Northern League does not want to bring home the grand prize of federalism only to find that they have no money to implement it and have to raise regional taxes to maintain the same level of services. And while Berlusconi can just afford to lose Fini and maybe 25 deputies, he cannot lose the League deputies.
Then there are problems which are either minor or can be put off. There is a suggestion that a proposed constitutional amendment should give protection to ministers for alleged offences committed before they became ministers. The Alfano amendment already gives the prime minister immunity from prosecution while in office and the addition is drawing much flack. But that can wait.
What did not wait was the resignation of the latest cabinet minister, Berlusconi’s former employee, Aldo Brancher who blatantly used his new appointment to avoid turning up to his trial on the grounds that he was too busy with his new ministery. And this when his precise responsibility had not been defined. He went.
At the other end, Berlusconi has not replaced Scaloja, the minister who resigned in May because he discovered that “someone had paid for my house” (€900,000 btw). Berlusconi took over as interim minister for the ministry for Economic Development which regulates media licences and competition. For a man who has never known the meaning of “conflict of interests”, that too can wait.
For all the heralded high drama, the week is likely to end in the usual compromise as Fini has no desire to go out in a blaze of glory which is what a challenge would mean and Berlusconi himself has gone back on many of the most stringent cuts announced by his economics minister, Giulio Tremonti. Tremonti resigned once before and he might do so again; but better to lose a minister than the government.
So Berlusconi is weaker but he is still far from on the ropes.
Posted 5 July 2010

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Sabbatical Diary
“A year on sabbatical? That means you’ll be doing nothing for a whole year; how lucky you are”. Well, not exactly… friends often think that a sabbatical means an extended holiday which is not quite the truth.
The point of this diary is not just to show the world that I am indeed working or to justify my absence to AUR though there’s a bit of that but it is mainly to show to students that their teachers do not just teach. And the diary is also a way of nailing my colours to the mast; when you have a secret schedule, it’s easy to fudge delays to oneself and to the world. If the world already knows, it becomes more difficult.
To be sure, I’m hugely looking forward to the coming year but it’s not going to be a bucolic 12 months by the seaside or in the country or travel to exotic places although I hope that it will include at least some of all three.
The plan is to complete a book project and two, maybe three serious articles and there are plenty of other projects to follow if I manage to finish the most important ones.
The first is a biography of a curious and contradictory fascist called Aldo Finzi; provisional title originally The dangerous edge of things (filched from Browning via Graham Greene) but I soon discovered that there was a book with the same title published in 2006. More about him later. Then in July, a colleague in Scotland, Maurizio Carbone asked me if I would contribute to a book on Italian foreign policy that he is editing. It was a great opportunity to develop threads which I’ve been working on for quite a few years, but the deadline is mid-September. The good news is that it will not take too much time and effort away from Finzi; the bad news is that I’ve got to deliver it in a fortnight.
Then there is a return to organised crime, at least the study of it; a year ago I gave a paper on Italian organised crime to the Criminal Intelligence Service of Ontario’s annual conference and in January I extended to the subject to Ghana with a paper at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra so it is time to write them up into an article. This is part of a bigger project with a friend and colleague, Antonio Vazquez in Madrid. We will be doing the research for the Real Instituto Elcan and trying to describe the tentacles that link Italy, Spain and West Africa in transnational crime. Elcan is Spain’s equivalent of Chatham House or the IAI here in Italy.
And then a small idea which I’ve been nursing for 20 years, Visegrad and Italian army diplomacy. In 1989 I spent some time in the Italian army archives looking for material on the former UN Secretary General, Kurt Waldheim’s activities in the Balkans in 1942. I came across what seemed to be an amazingly effective example of what today would be called “second track diplomacy”. Officers of the V Alpine Division, Pusteria, managed to negotiate their way into occupying the north eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad without firing a shot. The story had nothing to do with Waldheim so I shelved it, but that is what sabbaticals are for, to dust off old projects from the shelf and complete them. It will also mean finding someone in Belgrade to look at the Yugoslav partisan archives because I’ve only seen one side of the story.
And then there is a bigger Balkan idea which involves another friend and colleague, Maja Gori, an archæologist specialising on Balkan prehistory. We want to analyse the use and abuse of archæology and art in creating (and destroying) national identity in the Balkans. But Maja has a Ph.D. to finish in Heidelberg so this might take some time
This last August was indeed spent in the country or by the seaside and was most enjoyable too, thank you. But I also tried to keep up an average of 1,000 wds a day on the different fronts. There was the book proposal to be completed because writing comes much more easily if there is a contract; and there was the Italian foreign policy article to be planned and written. The commentary and calls for analysis don’t stop even in August in Italy. The Times asked me for a comment on the Berlusconi saga (published yesterday “The chasm between Berlusconi and reality” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6815531.ece and I did an interview with John Hooper for The Economist audio service on north-south differences in Italy – what is La questione meridionale today and how does it affect the government? Well, it might just bring the government down. (hear it at http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_chl=9d59819ce6521b183cf4e109469807fc150d864c&rf=bm) The most surreal was recording an interview with Wolf Achtner for Iran’s Press TV. We were discussing the ronde, the newly instituted vigilante volunteers in Italy and the overall security and law and order situation in Italy; the same day, the international media reported accusations of the rape, torture and murder of Iranian demonstrators. Security in Italy is not a major problem but in Iran it is – Press TV, not surprisingly did not look at Iran. And while I have my doubts about the overall wisdom of deploying vigilantes on Italian streets, they are no the basij with their sinister robocop uniforms and menacing motorcyle formations.
And today, I started working on a dig at S. Severa (the castle between S. Marinella and Cerveteri). The local archæological association, (Gruppo Archeologico del Territorio Cerite) has been able to look at all the areas of the castle that have been dug up during a major renovation project and they’ve already found the first church of S. Severa, a Roman villa and mediæval cemetry plus a lot of information about the Roman castrum. With luck, the area where I’ll be working will go down to the Etruscan layer. I’ve done one morning so far and will do two weeks in all

“Fidarsi è bene, non fidarsi è meglio” How serious is the recession in Italy?

Popular wisdom in Italy advises us that “to trust is good, not to trust is better” and this, in a very down to earth phrase is what has ruined the Italian economy over the last two decades and for the moment at least, saved it from some of the more acute pain of the present recession.

But now the hard reality of the world economy and Italy’s structural problems is catching up on the country. It is not the banks and the financial sector that are the problem but the old favorites: excessive public spending and debt and poor productivity. There are actually two economic crises gnawing at Italy – one is the world recession and the other is the longstanding structural faults which have been hamstrung Italy for decades. The government is hiding behind the first to mask its inability to deal with the second.

For most of this year, the OECD has been scathing in its criticisms of the management of the Italian economy. In March their report Economic Policy Reforms: Going for Growth 2009, they said that it was slipping further and further behind other wealthy developed countries. There was poor use of labour especially among the young, the old, women and the south. They reckoned that Italy needs to reduce public property and obstacles to competition. Taxes, especially on lower incomes should be reduced. There is a need for more education, especially at the university level. These are comments that we have heard for the last 40 years, maybe more. On the Heritage Foundation index of economic freedom, Italy sank from an already dismal 64th in 2008 to 76th in world ranking, behind Turkey and just making it into their “moderately free” category.

The OECD came back on the attack last week with a report on an Italian economy in “sharp recession” despite “a relatively healthy banking system”. They repeat the usual faults, a “weak underlying fiscal situation” and “poor productivity”.
Just yesterday, the OECD reported that Italy’s pension spending was too high at 14% of GDP in 2005, the highest in the OECD, almost a third of public spending and almost double most other countries. In 1995 Dini began pension reform but neither centre-left nor centre-right has had the courage to continue in any significant way. Italy huge commitment to pensions means that there is less welfare money available for education and to cushion the effects of job losses.
National organisations confirm this pessimism.

Confcommercio says that GDP this year will be 94.8% of 2007 figure (compared to US’s 98.2%, the UK’s 95.6% and Spain’s 98%. The lower GDP will mean less tax income and therefore a much greater increase in the public debt if there are to be any serious stimulus packages. It is due to rise from 105.7% last year to 114.7% this year and 117.5% in 2010, almost double the supposed eurozone limit of 60%.

The Confindustria’s president Emma Marcegaglia said last week that their studies reckoned that unemployment will go to 8.4% in ’09 to 9.3 in ’10. A million or so, still less than in ’91-’92 but for the government a timebomb on a short fuse. So far there has been almost no activity on the unemployed front but in September, with the holidays over and hundreds of thousands of workers with no work to go back to, there is bound to be unrest. This will be made worse by the natural deadline of contract renewal for large sectors of the economy.

Earlier in the year, Berlusconi showed his usual optimism and declared with a big smile that Italy had no toxic assets, Italian houses were not suffering from negative equity and there was (almost) no credit crunch, all of which was more or less true. Today, Italian businesses do have serious difficulties finding credit as the banks become even less trusting. Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti has made it very clear to Berlusconi that there is no money for big public works and very little even for earthquake reconstruction.

Berlusconi dismissed the stories about his parties and prostitutes as “rubbish”. He cannot brush aside the economic problems as “rubbish” nor that they are “a private matter”. The Berlusconi circus will keep people smiling or tut-tutting according to their point of view but without the bread he will have difficulty staying in power.

The Berlusconi Follies

Berlusconi as a Roman emperor is not an original image; the first cartoon that I can find of him as Nero fiddling is from July 2003 (with the EU burning). There are probably earlier ones and for sure there have been dozens since. But for all its predictability, the parallel is a valid one. Italy has had a stagnating economy for more than a decade and now with the recession, there is a strong likelihood that the dull and chronic decline will become loud and acute. And yet, for the Prime Minister, everything would be fine if only the foreign press and a couple of Italian papers stopped talking about his sex life or lack of it.
I will deal with the more serious aspects of the recession in a second posting but here I want to look at the effects of the “Folies Berlusconi”, the show which has been given more coverage abroad than here.

Questions
What is all the fuss about? The immediate debate is whether the Prime Minister was paying prostitutes to come to his parties. One woman, coyly described as an “escort”, a new anglo-euphemism in Italian, has said that she was promised €2,000 to spend the night with Berlusconi. The last two months have also revealed his relationship with a then 17 year old from Naples, the use of Air Force flights to bring in guests and entertainers to his Sardinian villa and the reasons for the conviction of David Mills for having received a $600,000 bribe from Berlusconi. None are discussed at the moment. Older elements of Berlusconi’s life are even less in the public eye – from the uncertain origins of his wealth to his unsavoury friends and employees in the past, to laws passed to protect his interests, to his very clear conflicts of interest. Today’s discussion about Berlusconi’s private life is partly about the hypocrisy of a politician who presents himself as a respected and faithful family man, defending Catholic morals who then apparently indulges in Fellini-like debauchery. It is about the possibility of blackmailing the Prime Minister. It is about figura, keeping or losing face, especially abroad. Berlusconi has outdone himself and all the reality shows on his various channels by giving Italy and the world his own reality show. It is about responsibility in politics, or lack of it. It is about the inebriating mix of sex, power and big money in one of the top ten richest countries in the world, which has often been a political innovator; there is the risk that the Italian model might be picked up elsewhere.

Why do a majority of Italians still accept him and many still adore him? His party did very well in last Sunday’s local elections and only dropped a couple of points in the European elections a fortnight ago. We’ll have opinion polls again after the election pause and no doubt they will give him high ratings. The opposition of course gives Berlusconi a constant boost with their lack of leadership, of programme and their internal divisions. But Berlusconi’s popularity is not only due to the centre-left’s ineptitude. Italy on the whole is very tolerant of misbehaviour be it on the roads, in building regulations or in filing tax returns. Like Mithridates, Italians have been taking doses of poisonous corruption for years and very little shocks them. Berlusconi is a role model for many and not only men who can only admire someone who increases his hair and decreases his wrinkles the older he grows.

Role of the media. Of course control of the media helps. Over the last week, the mass viewer channels, Berlusconi’s and RAI 1 and 2 have given scant coverage to the scandals and in the past the story has more often been the Prime Minister’s reaction rather than the allegations against him. He refuses to talk to the opposition papers, Repubblica and Unità journalists and uses family publications and friendly television employee-presenters to put forward his point of view. He has accused Repubblica of organising a plot against him and they have replied with a libel suit. But there is a peculiar naivete in his media management, he is so used to controlling everything that often he is gloriously unspun and genuine. This makes him very attractive to his supporters but gets him into trouble abroad. A few months ago he played one of his inane practical jokes on the then mayor of Florence; on the inaugural run of the new high speed link between Rome and Florence, he donned a ticket collector’s cap and and asked the mayor “how do you like the railwayman prime minister?” Without waiting for a reply, Berlusconi grinned and said “I myself prefer the whoremonger [puttaniere] PM”. A remark he must be regretting now.
Restrictions on telephone taps. There is a bill before Parliament which will greatly reduce investigators’ authority to use intercepts and amendment which, if passed, would retroactively prevent the taps being used as evidence. Much of the evidence in the Bari investigation depends on taps so could not be used.

Difficulties ahead.

G8 at L’Aquila. Berlusconi’s first big hurdle is to get through next month’s summit without major damage. Inevitably the international press will still be chasing the sex and other scandals and at least some the local press will be doing the same. Foreign journalists cannot be silenced in quite the same way as local ones so he will have to tread carefully at the press conferences.
Worse would be if a significant number or Aquilani decide that a demonstration at the summit is the best way to ensure promises for reconstruction. When Berlusconi moved the summit to l’Aquila, he thought it was a smart move because the violent no-globals could hardly smash their way through survivors’ tent cities. But if it is the survivors themselves who are demonstrating, Berlusconi can hardly send baton-wielding riot police to break up a crowd of homeless women children and old people.

Criticism from the Church. Last week the Conference of Italian Bishops daily, Avvenire asked for “clarity” on Berlusconi’s alleged behaviour; this week Famiglia Cristiana’s editor complained of the “moral decadence” in the country.

Criticism from allies. Even one of his closest allies, the rumbustious editor of Il Foglio, Giuliano Ferrara gave Berlusconi a dire warning last week when he compared the present situation with 24th July. This was the day before Fascist leaders overthrew Mussolini in 1943. Strong medicine as Berlusconi is not Mussolini and Italy is not in the middle of a world war but an indication that not everyone is happy in the centre-right.

Verdict on immunity law. Last year Berlusconi passed a law giving himself immunity from prosecution as long as he is in office. The Consitutional Court is due to give its verdict in the next two or three months. Last time, in 2004, the court declared the immunity law unconstitutional – we will see whether the new law fulfills their conditions. If it does not, then Milan prosecutors will immediately re-open the Mills case and there is a good chance that he will be involved in the Bari investigation for corruption and prostitution.

A million unemployed by Christmas. All the indicators suggest that the recession is going to get worse before it gets better (see subsequent post). With close to 10% unemployment and reduced incomes in most of the rest of the economy, the government will be under serious pressure. Berlusconi’s optimism will not put food on the tables of the unemployed.

Contract negotiations. Even for those who have a job, there will be tension as some of the biggest unions will be negotiating new contracts in the autumn. More potential trouble.

Increased pressure from Umberto Bossi and the Northern League. The only clear winners in the European elections were the League. Umberto Bossi has repeated his support for the government but obviously will be upping the stakes over the next few months, either by pushing for more ministerial posts or for greater devolution in the Fiscal Federalism bill going through Parliament. He is very unlikely to sink the ship as he did in 1994 but he could certainly make it change direction.

The cracks in Berlusconi’s real and political makeup are hardly visible but they are there and the end will certainly be even more dramatic than the other reality shows.

Black shirt or double breasted suits?

When is a fascist not a fascist? Or more relevant to these time, when is an apparent democrat actually a fascist? Rivers of ink have flowed trying to pin down an acceptable definition of “fascism” and this is not going to add to the flow, but now that Italy’s self-defined “post-fascist” Alleanza Nazionale has dissolved itself ready to merge with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia into the Popolo delle Libertà (People of Freedom), it is important for Italians and other Europeans to know what the new party stands for and above all, what its undisputed leader, Silvio Berlusconi stand for.
It is easy to dismiss him as a thinly disguised fascist, a latterday Mussolini with smiles, hair transplants and off-colour jokes instead of the jutting jaw and high-flown rhetoric. Foreign commentators have called him fascist on many occasions since he “came onto the field” in 1994. When Berlusconi opened the new highspeed rail link between Milan and Rome a few days ago, he was photographed with a railwayman’s cap adding to the picture gallery of Berlusconi in costume alongside the Mussolini’s even bigger range of extravagant headwear. Recently Mario Vargas Llosa called him a “caudillo”, the title Franco gave himself to emulate both Hitler and Mussolini. But, Vargas Llosa added, he “is a democratic caudillo”.
Fascism began its rise to power with violence, the nightstick and castor oil, used violent words constantly in its rhetoric against internal opposition and against other countries and then used real violence against both. Berlusconi in contrast neither uses violence nor threatens it. The most serious emetic that he uses are the mindless variety shows on his television channels which are watched voluntarily by millions rather than forcibly administered castor oil. Mussolini was constantly contemptuous of “democracy” while Berlusconi equally constantly, praises Italy’s democracy which has made him prime minister three times. Mussolini was aggressively nationalistic in word and deed while Berlusconi has never invaded another country and apart from calling his party Forza Italia, his nationalistic speeches don’t go beyond claiming that Italy has beautiful secretaries.
By any standards, Silvio Berlusconi is not a fascist, either crypto- or post-.
He is something new, and even though he thrives on elections, he is less than fully democratic. He sees himself as an elected populist, absolute ruler; one of his first remarks on becoming prime minister in 1994 was that he had been “anointed by the people” and since then, he has frequently made it clear that anyone thus elevated should have no other limit to his power apart from election.
The president of Italy has very limited residual powers but even these have been too much for Berlusconi and he has shown his impatience with all three of the presidents he has had to deal with while he has been PM. Last month he clashed with President Napolitano who had refused to sign a decree law preventing the removal of Eluana Englaro’s life support system. Englaro was in a permanent vegetative state and the Supreme Court had already decided that she had expressed a desire to not be kept alive under those circumstances. Thwarted by both the Court and the President, Berlusconi put a bill to Parliament which was not passed in time to prevent Englaro dying but is now close to passing in a form which will vitiate any living will.
He is also beginning a stand-off with Napolitano over whether he can introduce a new housing measure (which would allow Italians to increase the volume of their houses by 20%) as a decree law or whether he will have to follow the full Parliamentary procedure of a regular bill. Either way, the executive would be taking power from regional and local governments which regulate building permits.
At the same time as trying to sideline the present President, Berlusconi is manoevering to reform Italy’s constitution into a presidential republic in time for him to take over when Napolitano’s mandate ends in 2013.
Then there are bills before Parliament reforming the judiciary in a way which will transfer power from it to the executive; Mr. Berlusconi is very open about his designs and not only won a large majority at the Parliamentary elections last year but is very likely to do the same at the European Parliament elections in June. On the electoral front, Berlusconi is democratic and very successful. He is less favourable to the other conditions of democracy.
Only yesterday, Berlusconi dismissed Parliament as being full of makeweights, people there just to make up the numbers; he has made no secret of his impatience with Parliamentary procedure and his contempt for its delays. He would like to abolish individual members’ votes and see party leaders voting for their whole group.
Ironically, the Parliament was defended by the onetime “post-fascist” Gianfranco Fini and now Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. Fini emphasised the importance of Parliamentary procedure and forced Berlusconi to backtrack.
Unlike Berlusconi, Fini has fully embraced Italy’s anti-fascist heritage and its democratic institutions. He has been to the commemoration of the Ardeatine Caves massacre (where Nazis killed 335 Romans in 1944) on more than one occasion and last week even praised the Resistance for having made Italy a free country. A few days ago he explicitly retracted his remark of fifteen yeas ago that “Mussolini was the greatest statesman of the 20th C”. In any case, he has been highly critical of Mussolini on many occasions, much to the ire of Mussolini’s granddaughter, Alessandra.
Fini will also take part in the celebration of the end of World War II on 25 April for the first time this year, an event that Berlusconi has always avoided.
So the paradox is that the man who started as follower of one Mussolini’s most loyal henchmen is now a paragon of constitutional virtue while Berlusconi is emptying the constitution of its democratic substance to sit in its shell not as a fascist but proudly, as Berlusconi.