I LOVED MY COUNTRY BEFORE HIM....
Silvio Berlusconi dominated Italian political life for 17 years as he moved in and out of office and in and out of scandal, brazen and indomitable, magnetic and divisive. He was first elected prime minister in 1994 and was forced from office in November 2011 by the European debt crisis, ending his third term and, by all appearances, his elective career.
First through his television empire, Mediaset, and then through his political apparatus, Mr. Berlusconi helped shape the country’s imagination, politics and economy for a generation.
With a combination of savvy media domination, old-fashioned party politics and a salesman’s preternatural charm, Mr. Berlusconidominated Italy more than anyone since Mussolini.
His resignation does not erase his presence from the political stage. He still has a powerful political party, now fighting for its future, and owns Italy’s largest private broadcaster. But it marks the symbolic end of an era in which the media baron held the country under his spell.
A businessman who built a real estate and media empire, Mr. Berlusconi was first elected in 1994, casting himself as a modernizer and promising Italy a season of free-market reform. But after a career barely dented by colorful sex scandals and multiple corruption trials, it was the market that finally drove him from office.
As the interest rates charged on Italy’s massive debt soared to dangerous levels, Mr. Berlusconi offered to resign if Parliament passed an austerity package demanded by the European Union. Earlier that day he had failed to gain a majority in a test vote in Parliament.
He stepped down on Nov. 12 after the package was adopted and was replaced by a former European Commissioner, Mario Monti, who was asked to lead a cabinet of technocrats.
From the start, Mr. Berlusconi entwined his fate with Italy’s. By personalizing Italian politics and turning himself into a brand — self-made, virile and wily — he transformed Italy’s political and institutional cultures in ways that will resonate for years.
In recent years, it was the sex scandals that most dominated the headlines, as reports emerged from judicial investigations of tawdry parties at the prime minister’s private homes involving scores of young women and even a prostitute who went by the stage name Ruby Heartstealer. (He faces charges of paying for sex with a minor, although they both deny the sex, and abusing his office by helping release her from police custody when she was arrested for theft.)
For months before his resignation, there had been a growing belief in Italy that the Berlusconi era was coming to an end. In the summer, Mr. Berlusconi had responded to market fears by promising deep budget cuts and sweeping reforms. But the scandal-plagued prime minister — who is on trial for corruption, tax fraud and paying for sex with a minor — seemed unable to deliver more than a fraction of this deeply unpopular agenda.
He was unable to overcome opposition within his own coalition for measures like raising the retirement age. Facing ridicule from other European leaders, in November he was forced to take the humiliating step of “inviting’' the International Monetary Fund tolook over Italy’s shoulder to ensure that it carries out reforms.
Background
Mr. Berlusconi first came to power after a huge bribery scandal brought down the established political order, in which the Christian Democrats, Socialists and Communists for decades presided over a jobs-for-votes system that helped build up the public sector. He served a year.
He then returned to power from 2001 to 2006, during which time he largely kept that time-honored system intact, analysts say, but replaced the old political order with the parties in his coalition.
When he took power again in 2008, Mr. Berlusconi seemed to be almost permanently intertwined with the state. Italy’s economy is still largely connected to the public sector, especially in lucrative areas like infrastructure and health care, and such contracts depend on good connections with the government. This continues to be true even after a wave of privatizations that took place during the 1990s.
His political and business career has been rocked by controversy. But in May 2009 revelations of personal indiscretions with young women were remarkable even by Mr. Berlusconi’s standards, resulting in a divorce and prostitution scandal.
In February 2011, Milan prosecutors filed a request to try him oncriminal charges related to prostitution and abuse of power, as a defiant Mr. Berlusconi said that he would continue to govern. He has accused prosecutors of having “subversive aims” and vowed to fight the charges.
He has also been the subject of several investigations relating to his business. On Oct. 18, 2011, a court in Milan dismissed charges against him in the so-called Mediatrade case that alleged fraud in the purchase of film rights by his company, Mediaset. However, the court indicted the prime minister’s eldest son and the company’s chairman.
Mr. Berlusconi now has three pending trials in Milan. Accusations include tax fraud, corruption and paying for sex with a minor. The other tax fraud accusation refers to Mediaset’s purchase of film rights at what prosecutors say were inflated prices. In both cases, the defendants are accused of overpaying for rights to show U.S. movies on Mr. Berlusconi’s TV networks and pocketing the differences.
Mr. Berlusconi has been losing political steam since a key partner in his center-right coalition broke away in 2010. By late 2011, with the country facing an economic crisis, there was broad consensus that the Berlusconi era was coming to an end — except that none of the groups that would like to drive him from power could agree on what would happen next.
In October, Mr. Berlusconi barely survived a vote of confidence, but was left so weak as to be effectively prevented from governing. It was only saved by loyalists who have said they want the government to limp along rather than fall and potentially be replaced by nonpolitical technocrats with a mandate to carry out those structural changes.
With an economy projected to produce no growth in the near future, and a populace seemingly finally tired of Mr. Berlusconi and his antics, Italy appeared mired in what the daily Corriere della Sera called “an atmosphere of interminable agony.”
A Growing Liability
Mr. Berlusconi suffered a stinging political defeat in June 2011 when voters overturned laws passed by his government that would have restarted Italy’s nuclear energy program, privatized the water supply and granted him immunity from prosecution.
Still, Mr. Berlusconi vowed to remain in power and, in the face of a mounting economic crisis, to push for big budget changes. In the summer of 2011 Italy was under intense observation from the markets and the European Central Bank, which in August agreed to buy some of the country’s debt in exchange for changes to the labor market.
Mr. Berlusconi pledged to eliminate Italy’s budget deficit by 2013, though he has given few specifics as to how he would do so. Economists say Italy needs significant structural reform and cost cutting in order to stimulate growth and reduce its debt, which at 118 percent of gross domestic product is the second-highest in the 16-member Euro zone after Greece.
Critics accused Mr. Berlusconi of squandering his majority and focusing more on his personal life — not only the now-infamous wild parties, but also his many legal sagas — than on the country’s problems.
In mid-October 2011 it appeared that his era was slowly drawing to a close, when his government failed to garner a majority on a technical vote on last year’s budget review. Visibly shaken, Mr. Berlusconi left the lower house without speaking publicly, while members of the opposition called on him to resign.
It was unclear whether the upset marked the imminent demise of the Berlusconi government or whether it was just another nail in the coffin for a political era that is widely considered to be finished — by Italians, if perhaps not by the politicians who are desperately scrambling to stay in power.
Even within Mr. Berlusconi’s own fractious center-right coalition, more members of Parliament are upset with him and see him as a growing liability to Italy’s economy and standing on the world stage, but so far no group has shown the muscle or the numbers to form a viable alternative government.
After Greece, it is Italy, with its staggering debt and zero projected growth, that is considered most at risk of default if European leaders fail to come up with a swift plan to save the euro. But as the long twilight of Mr. Berlusconi’s rule lingers on, the divide between external economic reality and internal political maneuvering has never been wider.
Sex Scandal Unfolds in the Press
When Mr. Berlusconi’s wife, Veronica Lario, announced in May 2009 that she wanted a divorce and accused him of cavorting with young women, it seemed like yet another storm that Italy’s most powerful man would easily weather.
Then things turned surreal. First came a rare and inescapable torrent of speculation in the media and at dinner tables about the nature and origins of his relationship with Noemi Letizia, a pretty blond aspiring model whose 18th birthday party he attended in Naples in April. (She said she calls him Daddy.) This was the party that caused Mr. Berlusconi’s wife to declare their marriage, one year older than Ms. Letizia, over.
A new scandal erupted the same month as three women said that they were paid to attend parties at Mr. Berlusconi’s official Rome residence and that they were given jewelry. The depiction of the prime minister’s residence as a kind of Playboy Mansion with spotty security shifted the public mood in Italy.
In 2010 more trouble unfolded. Prosecutors asserted that Mr. Berlusconi paid for sex with Karima el-Mahroug, a Moroccan-born nightclub dancer nicknamed Ruby Heart-Stealer, before she turned 18, and that he called police to help release her from custody after she was detained for theft in Milan.
Mr. Berlusconi said he had called police to intervene on Ms. Mahroug’s behalf because he had been told that she was the niece ofHosni Mubarak, then still president of Egypt.
Ms. Mahroug said that she did not have sex with the prime minister but that he did pay her about $9,500, the first time she attended a party at his villa outside Milan. Paying for sex with a minor under 18 is illegal in Italy.
More Problems
Besides the so-called Rubygate scandal, Mr. Berlusconi faced other legal hurdles. In January 2011, Italy’s Constitutional Court partially lifted his immunity, a ruling that reactivated three other trials against him, including one in which his former tax lawyer, David Mills, was convicted of taking a bribe in exchange for false testimony.
Mr. Berlusconi’s popularity, as reflected in polls, dropped sharply, and he appeared deeply worried about further damage, especially from moderate Catholic voters. He announced million-dollar defamation lawsuits against several publications that had been critical of him, part of what his critics and allies alike worry is a dangerous trend toward treating any criticism as disloyal and possibly illegal.
In February 2011, thousands of Italians took to the streets in coordinated demonstrations that organizers said were aimed at restoring the dignity of Italian women amid the latest sex scandal and after years in which Mr. Berlusconi routinely appointed television showgirls to political office.
We italian people are sick of this shit!!
