Looking younger all the time

After winning Italy’s election, 71-year-old Silvio Berlusconi has spoken a great deal about being older and wiser in the ways of politics, having already served twice as prime minister. But there is no doubt that the conservative billionaire — thanks to cosmetic surgery including a hair transplant — looks much younger in many ways than he did when he last won a parliamentary election in 2001. Compare the pictures above, the first from his 2008 campaign and the second from November seven years ago.

Berlusconi, a former cruise ship crooner who built a media empire from scratch, is proud of his appearance. He bragged on Tuesday that one foreign correspondent had even asked him if he was younger than his 52-year-old election rival — Walter Veltroni.

I remember at a press conference in 2004, Berlusconi was asked about his hair transplant and said that he believed his more youthful image made him a better ambassador for Italy.

“I have taken one of the choices of modern life,” he said at the time. “It is a way of showing respect to those who share your life, your family. It is a way of showing respect to those who expect you to represent them on an international and national stage.”

The Rainbow Left alliance, which includes remnants of Italy’s once-mighty communist party, somewhat surprisingly decided to hold what was meant to be its election night celebration at Rome’s Hard Rock café.

An apt choice for the DJ might have been “God Save The Queen” by the Sex Pistols, with its refrain of “There’s no future, no future, no future for you”.

The alliance failed to win seats in either house of parliament, a performance which provoked the headline “It’s a Waterloo” in the moderate daily Il Riformista and prompted the resignation of alliance leader Fausto Bertinotti, speaker of the lower house during the last parliament.

It appears Silvio Berlusconi has won his long-term battle against the political opponents he lambasts as communist liars and accuses of eating children and priests.

Leading the hand-wringing, communist daily Il Manifesto ran the headline “Extra-parliamentary Left” and said the Rainbow Left had paid a very high price for not giving its supporters what they wanted during two years in the coalition government of former Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

Gennaro Migliore, a hard left lawmaker, told L’Unita (the newspaper founded by leading Italian communist Antonio Gramsci in 1924) that the election debacle constituted a “Ground Zero”.

Il Manifesto columnist Valentino Parlato said the Left had failed to convince Italians worried about job security, who had instead voted in droves for Berlusconi and his anti-immigrant and protectionist Northern League allies.

The disastrous showing by the radical left was the biggest surprise of election night, according to Gian Enrico Rusconi, a political scientist at Turin University.

“We have seen a shift to the right in Italian society and the incredible thing is that the so-called radical left, the closest to the communist tradition in our country, is not even in parliament,” he told Reuters. “I don’t believe there is a future for them because this setback is very, very serious.”

"As is customary in all Western democracy, and as I feel it is right to do, I called the leader of the People of Freedom, Silvio Berlusconi, to acknowledge his victory and wish him good luck in his job," Veltroni told reporters, bowing to the inevitable, even if final results were hours away.

Berlusconi has never admitted losing the 2006 election which he blamed on fraud and Veltroni's noble gesture seemed to be the latest effort to imitate his much-admired counterparts in the Anglo-Saxon world where 'fair play' is, in theory, considered a virtue.

"I can't deny that I think the 2006 elections were
irregular. The result we achieved today is proof of that,"
Berlusconi said.

Barack Obama, from whom Veltroni copied his "Yes we can" slogan "Si puo' fare", will be hoping he does not to have to make a phone call similar to Veltroni's any time soon.

 Other candidates have chosen more traditional venues for the evening: the centre-right's Silvio Berlusconi will be waiting it out at his villa in Arcore near Milan, while centre-left rival Walter Veltroni will be standing by at his party's offices in Rome dubbed the "Loft".

Far-right leader Daniela Santanche says she won't stray far from her home in Milan, while Northern League leader Umberto Bossi and centrist leader Pier Ferdinando Casini will both be holed up at their respective party headquarters.

Angry at plans to build a landfill site nearby, one group of young Neapolitans  gathered 600 election identification cards and sent them to the Italian president instead of using them to vote.

"I'm not going to vote because I don't feel represented by the institutions and because there is no-one that worries about preserving our rights," group member Sebastian Perrone told the Ansa news agency. 

Another angry Neapolitan took an even more novel approach: he ate his ballot form at the polling booth.

Finally, motorists on the A14 highway in Italy were greeted on Sunday morning by two large banners spray painted with the words : "Enough with politics, We want colonels!" They were quickly taken down by police.

A popular "anti-politics" movement led by figures like comedian Beppe Grillo has swept up about 6 to 8 percent of voters, estimates the pollster Luigi Crespi. He estimates the number of blank ballots will nearly triple to about 1 million during the April 13-14 election from about 400,000 in the last parliamentary election two years ago.

Movie buff Walter Veltroni may be the underdog in Italy’s election, but at least he can count on a few friends in Hollywood.

With George Clooney touring Italy to present his latest film “Leatherheads”, Veltroni made sure TV cameras were at hand when the two shared a coffee in a Milan bar.

“Like Obama, I think Veltroni has a rare quality, a great oratory ability which can bring people together,” said Clooney, comparing “my friend Walter” to Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama.

Veltroni, who two years ago set up Rome’s first international film festival, also received the public backing of  Italian directors Nanni Moretti, who wrote a full-page article in left-wing daily La Repubblica explaining why people should not vote for Silvio Berlusconi, and Roberto Benigni.

“How can you not vote for him? He is good and he is good-looking,” said Benigni, whose “Life is beautiful” won an Oscar for best foreign film in 1999.

But the one endorsement for Veltroni that appeared to irk his rival Silvio Berlusconi most came from Francesco Totti, the AS Roma captain who is arguably Italy’s most famous footballer.

Totti said this week he would vote for Francesco Rutelli, a close Veltroni ally who is standing for mayor of Rome.

“If he is backing Rutelli, then he is out of his mind,” said Berlusconi , who owns AC Milan.

“If I asked the Milan players to support me, many would, gladly. Many of them have asked me but I forbade it. That’s the difference between me, Veltroni and Rutelli,” he said.

When I told my wife that I was going to meet porn star Milly D'Abbraccio at her apartment the other day, during office hours, with a camera crew, she had the same reaction that my boss did: sounds like a great story. That's because D'Abbraccio is running for public office, just like Cicciolina did decades ago.

If Cicciolina was known for her impromptu striptease, then D'Abbraccio's calling card must be her bottom -- which she plastered on campaign posters gracing the walls of the Eternal City (see below). Her campaign poster complains that Italians are tired of the same old faces in politics, and uses the Italian swear word for backside to describe what their faces look like.

It's hard to find the right balance as a journalist when interviewing a porn star for a political story. There was an uncomfortable moment when, cameras rolling, D'Abbraccio started listing her favourite films, which include "Professoressa di lingue" or Professor of languages (and tongues). I admit, I had to fight very hard to stop from laughing out loud.

A long-time Reuters correspondent who has tossed questions at everyone from Hugo Chavez to Hamid Karzai, I'm used to being deadly serious. But was that same attitude necessary or even helpful in this interview? Did I need to nearly give myself a seizure to prevent myself from laughing? I'm assuming the name of that film was supposed to be amusing.

If you read the Reuters story, you'll see that D'Abbraccio knows how to have fun when answering stale questions from "serious" correspondents. We'll see if that skill is enough to get her elected to city hall.

At a campaign rally next to the Colosseum in Rome on Thursday evening, Silvio Berlusconi and his allies spoke out against illegal immigration and vowed to make stamping it out a priority if elected.
At times the rhetoric was vehement — and then drew some of the loudest cheers of the night.
Their hardline stance may be partly because they fear losing votes to Franceso Storace’s right-wing party “La Destra” (The Right). The party’s candidate for prime minister, the feisty Daniela Santanche, this week had a high-profile clash with Berlusconi on women’s issues.
Alfredo Antoniozzi, running for president of the province of Rome, kicked things off at Thursday’s rally, complaining that so-called “clandestini” were “infesting” Italy’s streets. Rome mayor candidate Gianni Alemanno pledged to expel 20,000 illegal immigrants immediately on taking office: “We want to feel like masters in our own home! We want to liberate Rome from this degradation!”
Alemanno belongs to the Alleanza Nazionale party, which traces its roots to Italian fascism. (The grandaughter of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Alessandra Mussolini, appeared on stage in the latter part of the rally.)
Alleanza leader Gianfranco Fini promised that if Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PDL) party wins the election, the law would be changed to make sure that expulsions of illegal immigrants were actually carried out.
Rules on immigration are enshrined in a law that bears Fini’s name and that of Umberto Bossi, the leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League that is also allied to Berlusconi.
(Reuters colleague Gilles Castonguay wrote a great blog about the Northern League’s anti-immigrant campaign last week.)

When Berlusconi finally took to the stage, after a stirring rendition of the Italian national anthem, he accused his centre-left rivals of opening Italy’s borders and allowing in large numbers of illegal immigrants. This had gravely compromised the safety of Italy’s streets and could not be tolerated any longer, he said.
One of the biggest laughs of the evening came when Berlusconi suggested his centre-left rival Walter Veltroni emigrate to Africa.

Per domani la situazione non si presenta molto diversa. I dibattiti di giornata registrano infatti almeno tre battute degne di nota per una segnalazione nei blog (sperando che non riescano a scalare nuovamente anche le prime pagine dei quotidiani). La prima è quella di un Berlusconi che si rimangia l’offerta alle minoranze della presidenza di una delle due Camere, avendo affermato che finché Napolitano non molla il Quirinale è impensabile che il Senato possa essere lasciato al centrosinistra (o forse, come l’hanno interpretato i più, era solo una autocandidatura al Quirinale invitando l’attuale inquilino a lasciare libero il posto).

La seconda ha visto protagonista Veltroni nella registrazione del Porta a porta di questa sera. Stanco delle continue osservazioni di Vespa, quando il conduttore gli ha ribattuto che non è che Berlusconi abbia chiesto test di sanità mentale per i pm, ma “semplici” test psico-attitudinali, Veltroni il pungiglione l’ha rivoltato verso la vespa: e perché non i test psico-attitudinali anche per i conduttori? gli ha ribattuto.

La terza ha avuto per scena il cortile interno di Montecitorio e per protagonista una splendente Daniela Santanché, in compassato completo nero, con i capelli raccolti in sobria ed elegante acconciatura. Ma quando i giornalisti, insistendo perfidi, gli hanno ripetuto per la terza volta che Berlusconi è ossessionato dai voti che la Destra potrebbe sottrargli, ha sfoderato vertiginosi tacchi a spillo: “E’ inutile che insista… tanto non gliela do”. Risata generale. E sipario, sulla terz’ultima giornata di campagna elettorale.

It appears to suggest that the former prime minister’s image is deeply engrained in the psyche of Italians and this may give him an electoral advantage.

Through his Fininvest holding company, the former prime minister controls Italy’s biggest private broadcaster as well as publishing and film assets. His brother owns the national daily Il Giornale and his wife funds the newspaper Il Foglio.

The psychological study, by University of Padua professor Sara Mondini and University of Trieste professor Carlo Semenza and published in 2004, examines the case of a 66-year-old housewife who had been suffering from a degenerative brain disease for three years.

She could barely recognise the face of her husband and two children and consistently failed to recognise relatives and friends. Shown pictures of 15 famous people, including Hitler, Mussolini and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, the woman recognised only one: Silvio Berlusconi.
She was unable to provide any information about the 14 other famous people but in the case of Berlusconi she could say he was a very rich man, a television owner and a politician.

“It may be important to underline the fact that testing occurred at around the time of the 2001 Italian general election when media coverage of Berlusconi was at its peak,” write Mondini and Semenza.

The woman was still able to recognise him six months later, despite further significant deterioration of her cognitive skills. By then, she was unable to recognize pictures of her own daughter and son, her cousins and neighbours and had serious problems in recognizing them in person.

Mondini and Semenza conclude that repeated exposure to Berlusconi may have turned his face into a non-living, but very well recognisable, icon. This is supported by the fact that during the latter stages of the study, the woman was able to recognise pictures of Jesus Christ on the cross.

“This telling effect of Berlusconi’s pervasive propaganda constitutes an unprecedented case in the neuropsychological literature,” the authors write.