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For Berlusconi, politics is a piece of cake

Stephen Brown — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:27:20 +0000

Non-Italians may struggle to understand why Italy has let Silvio Berlusconi become (as of two days ago) its longest-serving leader in post-war history, and the foreign media dedicates often indignant editorials and articles to the subject. But the centre-right leader himself put it very succinctly to a conservative youth meeting in Rome this week, "I have 68 percent support because the people are like me: they love women, football, life and someone who gets things done and does so much for his country."
At the same meeting, the 72-year-old leader responded to another day of newspaper revelations about his sex life (two newspapers reported that 30 young women had attended parties at his home, with some them paid 1,000 euros to sleep with him) by sticking defiantly to the jocose style of politics that he repeatedly says is the secret to his success (he calls it "la politica del cucu" or "hide-and-seek politics", referring to a practical joke he once played on an unimpressed Angela Merkel).
Berlusconi, the father of five and a grandfather, invited all the girls in the audience of young militants from the centre right to "give me their phone numbers".
Last weekend Berlusconi had extended the same invitation to the female host of the new Tunisian-based Mahgreb television channel Nessma (in which his family business empire is reported to have a stake ). After recalling his earlier incarnation as a cruiseship crooner, the smiling Berlusconi said to the programme's host: "And your phone number?"
This attitude helps explain why many Italians have little difficulty believing in the reports about the prime minister's partygoing private life. He himself only denies that he ever paid for sex, not that some of the young women in question stayed overnight at his apartment in Rome or attended parties at his villa in Sardinia. But, as Reuters Television found out when asking people on the streets of the capital whether all these revelations could bring down the premier, as some of his critics and even allies have been suggesting in recent days (see our story from yesterday), many Italians think such behaviour is either perfectly acceptable, irrevelant to politics, or they are resigned to the fact that it will not have a political impact.
"I think in private everybody is free to do what they want," said Rome resident Giovanni Cravero, while Giulia Fratelli told us that it "would not be fair" if it did prove Berlusconi's undoing.
Many Italians clearly find Berlusconi's uninhibited style to be a faithful reflection of the country's mentality, rather than an insult to women. Few politicians take him to task for his blatantly sexist comments and would probably be accused of being overly "moralistic" or hypocritical if they did, especially since the court case in Bari that is digging up most of the dirt about Berlusconi's private life has spattered some centre-left opposition figures too.
The prime minister, a former construction mogul who is the owner of AC Milan football club and of Italy's largest private broadcaster Mediaset, often cites his background in business as the key to his political success, contrasting it with rivals who have spent their entire working lives in politics.
Despite all the debate in Italian political and journalistic circles this week about whether the "Berlusconi era" is coming to an end, he still has the support of about half the country, according to opinion polls (though that falls far short of his own privately commissioned polls, which are never published). Perhaps part of the explanation can be found in the entrepreneurial energy with which he has addressed the reconstruction of L'Aquila, which was hit by an earthquake in April.
Bringing a salesman's touch to politics, Berlusconi promised that the 30,000 people in the area made homeless by the earthquake would all have nice new homes, with all mod cons, by December -- "beautiful houses, with lawns out front. And in the fridge I will put cake, some bubbly and a note wishing them a nice life in their new home."
Why do you think Silvio Berlusconi still has the support of about half the country? What do you think of his style of leadership?

Berlusconi vs foreign media

Stephen Brown — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:39:11 +0000

It is always surprising that, for a media mogul, Silvio Berlusconi has had such a fraught relationship with the foreign press. The mutual dislike has escalated in recent weeks as the unwelcome attention of the foreign and domestic media has focused on the 72-year-old prime minister's relationship with a Naples teenager.
Now the prime minister and his aides repeatedly accuse the foreign press of waging a campaign against him at the instigation of the left-wing press in Italy, while the Berlusconi family paper Il Giornale makes more targeted attacks on foreign correspondents.
The latest to be struck off his Christmas Card list -- he has long been in dispute with The Economist which called him "unfit" to run Italy -- are The Times, Financial Times and Independent of London, France's Le Figaro, Germany's Die Welt and Spain's El Pais, which has just released photos of topless women at a poolside party at Berlusconi's Villa Certosa mansion in Sardinia -- photos which Berlusconi has so far managed to prevent being published in Italy. All of these papers have recently published articles and editorials that are highly critical of the one-year-old Berlusconi government. The FT -- not exactly a notorious left-wing organ -- called him "a ruthless man and "a danger, in the first place to Italy, and a malign example to all". The Times capped a series of pieces with an editorial entitled "The Clown's Mask Slips" and El Pais said the latest scandal, regarding the use of state flights to transport guests to the party in Sardinia, "leaves Berlusconi naked, not as a citizen, but as a politician".
Initially saying it would "laugh off" this criticism, the Italian government then went on the offensive and portray such pieces as an insult to the entire country.
The government's real ire, however, is reserved for The Times, which is owned by News Corp and Sky TV owner Rupert Murdoch. Berlusconi depicts it as a vendetta over his dispute over a rise on VAT for pay-TV with Sky.
Cabinet ministers have rushed to his support, with Welfare Minister Maurizio Sacconi telling Il Giornale this week that "behind every international organisation that speaks out against Italy and behind every hostile foreign press article, we must always look for an Italian or Italians". He accused the foreign press of attacking Italy "for fun ... a vice typical of the radical communist left which has no sense of national interest".
What is perhaps most unusual about Berlusconi's response -- apart from the interesting idea of a leftist plot involving the FT and Murdoch -- is that it reacts so loudly and at such a high level to foreign media articles. It is hard to imagine any other prime minister or president of a G8 country responding in person, and so angrily, to a foreign newspaper piece.
This irritability comes at a difficult time for Berlusconi when his high standing in polls and likely strong showing in the European elections contrasts with media scrutiny of his private life, prompted by his wife's divorce request and her comments about him "frequenting minors" and, enigmatically, being "not well". The sense of angst is magnified by Berlusconi himself raising the spectre of 1994, when his first government suffered setbacks in the form of a court case and was then toppled by his own allies. Berlusconi is using words like "subversion" when he talks about magistrates investigating him in various cases including, most recently, the fuss over the Sardinian party.
It is not all bad news for Berlusconi in the foreign press: the New York Times ran a story about plans to nominate him for the Nobel prize -- and helpfully provided the website of the committee trying to put him up for the honour.
Do you think the foreign press is unfair on Berlusconi and/or Italy? Is it being influenced by "leftists" in Italy? How should the Italian government respond to critical media coverage?

Italy gearing up to say “basta” to mosques

Stephen Brown — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:58:27 +0000

Italy may soon say "basta" (enough!) to new mosques. The far-right Northern League party, allies of centre-right Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, wants to limit the growth of Islam in the centre of world Catholicism by blocking the construction of mosques through strict new regulations. My feature on this -- "Italy's right to curb Islam with mosque law" -- outlines the proposed legislation.

One thing that struck me while researching the story was how much work the author of the draft law, Andrea Gibelli, seems to have done preparing this law. He quoted the Koran in Arabic, cited the legal systems of various Arab countries and said he had read "200 books" on the subject. He also gave a clue to some of the thinking behind the draft legislation when he told us that he had been helped in his understanding of Islam by friends from the Middle East. It turns out they were Lebanese Druze and Coptic Christians from Egypt, members of minorities whose opinions may be coloured by their long and not always harmonious relations with Muslims.

The Northern League does not mince words -- for example, it once advised the use of gunboats to scare off would-be illegal immigrants. Roberto Calderoli, now a cabinet minister, once walked his pet pig on a proposed mosque site to defile the soil there and wore a T-shirt with a Danish caricature of the Prophet Mohammad, triggering riots in Libya. Gibelli's bottom line was that building mosques in Italy at the current rate of expansion was a form of cultural colonisation. He said mosques "are often places of cultural indoctrination, sometimes linked to international terrorism." They get in the way of Muslims integrating into Italy's Catholic culture, he said. Anyway, he finally said, Muslims don't really need them as the Koran states that they can "pray anywhere."

Apart from Rome, whose Grand Mosque is a strong contender for the title of Europe's biggest mosque, Muslims in Italy certainly do have to "pray anywhere" at the moment. Many local communities, and not just those with Northern League mayors, have found ways to block the construction of new places of Islamic worship. Even Italy's business capital Milan has no proper mosque. Thousands of Muslims have been forced to pray on the pavement outside a converted garage known as the "Jenner Street mosque." But local authorities have decided this was too disruptive and moved them to a velodrome, where local media say the Muslims are charged for entry as if they were going to watch a race.

The left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper asked last week if, with many Muslims in the League's north-east strongholds forced to worship "in hiding" during the current Ramadan, the current centre-right government was respecting the constitutional right to freedom of worship. Il Giornale, the paper owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's brother, reported on a "revolt against the mosques" in the north east. In the Veneto and Friuli regions, it said, about 150,000 Muslims who already have 40 prayer halls are asking for more, to the consternation of local communities.

Tensions concerning construction of new mosques have been reported from around Europe. What do you think about the way Italy is dealing with the issue?

Vital role in Georgia crisis for…Italy?

Stephen Brown — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:21:52 +0000

Did Italy unwittingly trigger the crisis in South Ossetia and then play a central role in stopping it? It may not be the view in most of the world but you could come to that conclusion from reading some Italian papers.

First, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was quoted in a report by French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy on Wednesday, which was reproduced in full on the front page and pages 2 and 3 of Corriere della Sera, as saying that he was first alerted to the situation in South Ossetia by reports in the Italian press that he saw while on a dieting holiday in Italy.

"I am in Italy, for a slimming cure, and I am about to leave for Beijing. Then, in the Italian papers, I read: 'Preparations for war in Georgia.' You understand? There I am, relaxing, in Italy, and I read that my country is preparing for war! Realising something is wrong, I quickly return to Tbilisi," Saakashvili told his French interviewer.

Besides the intriguing idea of anyone trying to lose weight in Italy, the piece suggests the Italian press had a central role in the Georgian president's decision to try to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

According to another Italian media outlook, the weekly magazine Tempi (on their website only, since the print version has been suspended for summer holidays), Italy also played a central role in stopping the five-day conflict that it may have contributed to starting.

Tempi quoted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as saying that it was he who persuaded Vladimir Putin not to let his tanks go all the way to Tbilisi, thus avoiding what Berlusconi said would have been a "useless bloodbath".

When Reuters took the precaution of checking the quotes with Berlusconi's press office, we were first told: "If that's what they write, go ahead and pick it up." We also passed on the quotes to Moscow to get a response from Putin's office, to clarify whether Berlusconi really has such influence on the Russian premier and former president.

Very soon, Berlusconi's office told us it was putting out a statement to deny the juiciest quotes in the Tempi interview, where Berlusconi was quoted as saying: "Thank God my friend Putin listened to me. Otherwise there is no bloody way the Russian tanks would have stopped 15 km from Tbilisi. We have avoided a useless bloodbath."

The quote seemed to echo Berlusconi's election jingle "Meno male che Silvio c'e" ("thank goodness for Silvio"). But it was too good to be true, according to his press office at Palazzo Chigi. They said these quotes were not legitimate, were not the kind of language Berlusconi would have used anyway, and were the fruit of a misunderstanding at best, at worst pure invention.

The Italian prime minister, now in his third term in power, does have the ear of the Russian leader, who was the first foreign leader to visit him after the Italian conservative leader's election victory in April, at his villa in Sardinia (see picture). The newspaper owned by Berlusconi's brother, Il Giornale, reported on Aug. 12 -- the day Russia ordered a halt to the fighting -- that the Italian leader was mediating and "exercising moral-suasion" on Putin. The same paper later quoted Berlusconi as saying: "Putin told me 'Talk to Bush'. And Bush told me 'Talk to Putin'. In the end we achieved a major result."

Berlusconi’s Italy: miracle or illusion?

Stephen Brown — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:49:17 +0000

Residents of Naples, who had promised to demand that Silvio Berlusconi be declared a "saint straightaway" (Santo subito!") if he managed to clear their streets of rotting garbage, will probably agree with Newsweek's headline "Miracle in 100 Days" about the Italian prime minister's first three months in office. Resolving the city's garbage crisis was supposed to be his top priority and he has managed it, for the moment at least, while his other prime target -- crime, especially involving illegal immigrants -- has been tackled in a very visual way by deploying thousands of soldiers to the streets to help the police (see earlier blog "Italy sends in troops, but why?").

But Newsweek's latest article is a rare example of positive press abroad for the centre-right Italian leader, more accustomed to scathing editorials from the likes of The Economist questioning his fitness to lead and focusing on the conflict of interests of Italy's richest man being premier.

Berlusconi's government has seized on the article as proof that the 71-year-old media baron has "done what he promised", according to his spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti, who was enjoying what he called the "funny embarrassed silence" of the centre-left opposition regarding the Newsweek piece. Politicians from the ruling People of Freedom party also pointed out that, in the Italian news media which often gives very high play to critical foreign coverage of the country, the U.S. weekly's more positive angle merited only small articles deep inside the pages of the biggest-selling dailies like Corriere della Sera (which put it on page 11) or the more openly anti-Berlusconi La Repubblica (article also on page 11).

"What would have happened if Newsweek had opened fire on the government?" asked Daniele Capezzone of Berlusconi's own Forza Italia party, answering his own question by saying the mainstream press, often accused by the right of being biased, would have gleefully churned out "front-page pieces, reconstructions and recollections of the perennially 'unfit' Italy". Il Giornale, a newspaper owned by Berlusconi's brother, gave the Newsweek article more prominent coverage on its front page and in-depth coverage inside.

"The centre-right government has done in 100 days what the Prodi government would not have managed in 100 years," said Forza Italia deputy Isabella Bertolini, referring to Berlusconi's centre-left predecessor who was forced to resign earlier this year, his coalition in disarray.

Bertolini extended the complaint about the biased media to Italy's biggest weekly magazine Famiglia Cristiana -- distributed among the faithful at Catholic churches -- which this week took a bold swipe at the Berlusconi government for ignoring the plight of the poor and ordinary Italian families, while cracking down on beggars and those who rummage among rubbish bins for scraps to sell. The magazine accused Berlusconi's government of "playing toy soldiers" by deploying troops and warned there was "a risk of provoking a war between the poor".

One former Prodi minister, Paolo Gentiloni, advised Berlusconi supporters to read the Newsweek article right to the bottom, where they would find references to "the deep social and economic malaise in the country", he said. The Newsweek article, which does indeed end on a warning note about Italy's low salaries, high taxes and public debt and the need for more growth, came out a day after Italy reported a contraction in the economy for the second quarter of the year, fuelling speculation that it is about to enter its third recession this decade.

Italy sends in troops, but why?

Stephen Brown — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:03:56 +0000

"Should I wait until she's finished?" asks a soldier from an Italian Alpine regiment, in their distinctive feathered Tyrolean-style hat, to her police colleagues as they patrol an area of Turin notorious for addicts known as "Toxic Park" and see a woman shooting up.

Incidents like this one reported in Corriere della Sera newspaper seem to support Italian police unions' doubts about Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's initiative, which began this week, to put 3,000 soldiers on the streets of 10 cities for the next six months to help the police fight a supposed crime wave. Some police officers believe military personnel, even those hardened by peace missions abroad, do not have the training needed to fight crime.

But as the first few hundred soldiers took to the streets this week -- wearing barrack-dress uniform with sidearms only for street patrols, but camouflage combat gear and rifles for guard duty on "sensitive" targets like embassies and railway stations -- many city mayors hailed the exercise as a success. The military man in charge of the operation, Giuseppe Valotto, said the public reaction had been "incredibly positive" and helped improve citizens' perception of their own safety. Soldiers even notched up a few "collars" in their first few days on joint patrol with the police, hauling in 12 African immigrants in Naples accused of faking fashion brands, chasing a thief through the streets of Bari and nabbing a man in Milan who had snatched the takings of a bar from the till.

Being style-conscious Italians, of course, the troops carried off their street duties with the requisite swagger and Rome's right-wing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, who has worried about them scaring off the tourists, appeared taken with the Grenadiers of Sardinia helping out with guard duties in Rome, saying: "They looked like they were out of a film, really perfect, they have a great image."

But the political opposition, and the media, has asked if it is really necessary to draft in a token number of soldiers in a country that already has 230,000 police and carabinieri, and where the crime rate is not alarmingly high compared to the rest of Europe anyway. A new study by research centre Censis released this week shows, for example, that Italy has the lowest murder rate of the biggest European countries and one which is falling already. One union leader suggested the military should be drafted into Italian building sites instead to combat a growing cause of death among Italians -- fatal accidents at work, where Italy ranks top in Europe, according to Censis.

The opposition also points out that Berlusconi has mobilised the military while simultaneously reducing funding for the police in the budget.

The foreign press appears sceptical too, with the Financial Times saying in a comment piece this week that Italy's new conservative government might to well to focus instead on combatting corruption, where the country has the worst record in the European Union apart from Greece, according to Transparency International's global corruption Index. Forbes magazine called the operation a "diversion tactic" by Berlusconi to shift the focus away from the country's sagging economy, which it said has the lowest growth in the euro zone and is heading for recession.

But, as often seems to happen in Italy, Berlusconi comes in for fiercer criticism from the foreign press than from the domestic audience. While putting soldiers on the streets to combat a crime wave of dubious proportions might spark protest in some countries, so far it has been limited to a few banners and handbills in the capital saying "Free Rome".

Parte il rush finale: dal Veltrusconi all’Ok Corral

Stephen Brown — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:58:24 +0000

La giornata elettorale è sintetizzata da una vignetta e da
un'intervista. Nella prima, di Vincino, sul Corriere della Sera Pirlo (che ha sbagliato a fine partita il rigore per evitare la sconfitta ieri al Milan con l'Atalanta) abbraccia Berlusconi, entrambi in lacrime e il titolo parla del "Milan vecchio e
stanco di Pirlo e Berlusconi". Nella seconda, sulla Stampa, Pier Luigi Bersani invita il Pd a un "colpo di reni". C'è aria di
stanchezza, in giro.

Non è un caso che lo slogan che sta mettendo un po' di pepe sulla campagna elettorale, rilanciato da Newsweek, sia vecchio di mesi. Quel "Veltrusconi" (come si può leggere nell'articolo di Paolo Biondi su Reuters) irridente a mo' di sfottò che il settimanale americano ha fatto diventare un titolo programmatico
per dare un nome a quella che considera una inevitabile e
necessaria grande coalizione, altro non è che il nome che nel
novembre scorso era stato dato al possibile accordo in
Parlamento attorno a una riforma elettorale.

Secondo il Corriere della sera, il copyright del nome è
incerto e si perde nelle calure estive dello scorso agosto
quando (pare) fece capolino in un graffito sul muro di una
scuola romana.

Il Veltrusconi di novembre sfiorì però in pochi giorni. E'
rimasto in filigrana nel dibattito politico soprattutto nel
linguaggio dei partiti minori, esclusi dalle due coalizioni
maggiori, come denuncia del "grande inciucio".

Ma l'ingresso della campagna elettorale nella sua penultima
settimana prima del voto sembra prendere tutt'altra piega del
"volemose bene". Lucia Annunziata oggi sulla Stampa parla di
avvisaglie di un finale al calor bianco con "sorprese e colpi di
scena. Allacciamoci le cinture dunque: la sfida vera, in qualche
modo, comincia ora".

A suffragio di questa tesi una notizia fa capolino fra le
cronache: il Cavaliere si appresta a spedire a tutti i romani un
pamphlet sul "disastro Roma": un colpo allo stomaco del duo
Veltroni-Rutelli. E il Lazio, con la Lombardia, è una delle
piazze sulle quali si deciderà, al Senato, il destino delle
prossime elezioni.

Italy’s hybrid candidate: “Veltrusconi”

Stephen Brown — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:13:11 +0000

The Italian media thought they coined the term "Veltrusconi" for the possibility of a post-electoral deal between twice prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and his centre-left rival, Walter Veltroni, late last year when they began brief discussions about electoral reform, but the word is reported as appearing as red-painted graffiti on a school in Rome as long ago as July 2007, along with the words: "the two-headed monster". But even though the word has been bandied about liberally in the media ever since, both candidates for April 13-14's vote were horrified to see their faces physically merge in a disconcerting photo-montage on the front cover of Newsweek.

"It's horrible," Veltroni told reporters in response to the hybrid created by Newsweek for a cover story titled "The Mayor V. The Mogul". It shows the faces of the permanently tanned 71-year-old media tycoon Berlusconi and his bespectacled, bookish 52-year-old rival blending together to the backdrop of Rome's Colosseum.

"Veltrusconi? It's an ugly word with no meaning," said Berlusconi.

Both candidates have constantly denied speculation in the Italian media and among politicians of a "Grand Coalition", which would last just as long as it takes to reform electoral laws to create a two-party system, then be followed by yet another general election, though they have both acknowledged the possibility of a dead heat or very close result in the upper house or Senate and left the door open to talks on "institutional reform".

But, as the Newsweek cover and a cartoon on the front cover of Corriere della Sera on Monday show, such talk just won't go away.

"I really don't believe there will be any "Veltrusconi" because I think the people of the centre right will prevail in these elections and will have a large majority which will give them the duty and the honour of governing," Berlusconi told Corriere della Sera readers in an online video chat. He has maintained a lead in opinion polls of between five and nine percentage points in recent months, but Veltroni hopes for an inverted repeated of the 2006 campaign when centre-left challenger Romano Prodi's six-point lead was drastically reduced in the last few weeks of campaigning, producing the narrowest election result in modern Italian political history. Prodi won, but his tiny Senate majority of just two seats dogged his entire 20 months in office and eventually caused his downfall in January.

"I think you can govern with one or two votes' difference," Veltroni told one television interview on Monday. "That is still a majority, even though the Italian people should know whose fault this situation is," he said, referring to electoral rules introduced by Berlusconi's last government, know here as the "porcata" (rubbish being a polite translation) which make it virtually impossible to secure a strong majority in the Senate. There are few opinion polls on the Senate vote, since the majority "prize" there is awarded on a regional rather than national basis, but one in La Repubblica last week suggested Berlusconi would only, in the best of cases, be able to count on a margin of five senators in the upper house which has 315 elected members and seven unelected lifetime members.

Talk of an Italian "Grand Coalition" also came up in the Financial Times where Berlusconi's estranged Christian Democratic ally, Pier Ferdinando Casini, ruled out any two-way coalition with Berlusconi's People of Freedom though he did appear open to joining a broader German-style Grand Coalition formed by both Berlusconi and Veltroni in the event of a close finish or hung parliament.