Politics
The whole of Italy in his hands
Published 04 February 2002
Silvio Berlusconi has become the most dangerous man in Europe, the harbinger of a new style of political control
Silvio Berlusconi's leadership of Italy has ushered in a new phenomenon of the media age: the power of the media, unmedia-ted by politics. Italy, which is inventive in politics - it pioneered fascism in the early 20th century, and Euro- communism in the century's latter half - is again creative in the 21st century. It is rehearsing a new political act - that of mediacracy.
Berlusconi's actions in government make one value once more professional politicians and establishments. Alone among the leaders of the Group of Seven advanced industrial democracies, Berlusconi is not a professional politician. Tony Blair, George Bush, Jacques Chirac, Lionel Jospin, Jean Chretien, Junichiro Koizumi and Gerhard Schroder have all practised politics at some level for decades. Where they pose as "outsiders" (as do Bush and Koizumi), it is within limits, and is seen as something of a game.
But Berlusconi is a real political outsider. From the 1970s, he built huge wealth: first in property in Milan; then in the media, taking his Mediaset company from nothing to three channels - thus ensuring a virtual monopoly of the non-state TV sector. In both of these careers, he was hugely assisted by Bettino Craxi, the talented and corrupt leader of the Socialist Party, whose government fashioned a media law made to measure for Berlusconi's expanding TV empire. Berlusconi's career has been that of a mogul: he came to politics a decade ago, when he was already in his fifties, to be a mogul in politics.
Berlusconi succeeded in a third feat of managerial and personal efficiency: the creation of his party Forza Italia and, simultaneously, the rebuilding of a fragmented and factionalised right. He was elected prime minister at the head of a right-wing coalition in 1994, but was soon thrown out of power after a series of gross blunders. Within two years, he had united the parties once more, putting Forza Italia ahead in the polls. It was a unique recovery, which meant that the spectre of Berlusconi, his media power and wealth loomed over the political landscape during the last three years of the Ulivo centre-left government.
Berlusconi came to government last year on one slogan: that the business of Italian government was business. It was a bourgeois Leninism: Lenin believed that the communist state could be run like a giant factory; Berlusconi believes that it can be run as a giant service company with - as the La Repubblica journalist Antonio Polito wrote earlier this month - "ambassadors more like directors of company branches, consuls more like commercial representatives, and a foreign ministry more like Publitalia [an Italian promotion company]".
He became notorious with his speech, delivered in Berlin a few weeks after 11 September, to the effect that western civilisation was superior to Islam; and with his fit of temper that Italy did not get the Food Standards Institute in a Euro carve-up of agencies. (It went to the Finns, "who do not know what prosciutto is".)
These incidents show a man who grandstands on the international stage with outbursts that play well at home. The "civilisation" speech said what many thought, but no politician dared to say; according to the polls, it proved very popular. Later, he denied any intent to wound or offend. In the media, the bold offence is the important thing - the apology is always in small print, or at the end of the news bulletin.
But this posturing is less important than a consistent policy of downgrading the state by reducing its institutions. Even in opposition, he was waging war on a judiciary that was surrounding him and his companies with a thickening skein of allegations of corruption. Elio Veltri, a centre-left MP who co-wrote the bestselling book on Berlusconi, The Smell of Money (L'odore dei soldi), says that, "at a time [the latter half of the 1990s] when all the international organisations were raising the alarm against corruption, the favourite ally of organised crime and of the recycling of dirty money, Berlusconi convinced politicians, intellectuals and citizens that, in all, our country was no different from others and that corruption is an invention of a handful of magistrates thirsting for power".
But Italy is different from other major western states. Its besetting, and still unresolved, problem is that so much of its economy is criminalised, and so much of its fiscal system is regarded as an opportunity for creative criminality. Research two years ago by the Confcommercio consultancy claimed that one-fifth of the country's economy was in the hands of the Mafia; that the volume of criminal business amounted to around £100bn, equal to 15 per cent of the country's gross domestic product; and that the consolidated wealth of organised crime stands at around £670bn. Efforts to reduce this problem need to be consistent over decades if they are to produce results. It seems that the Berlusconi government has given a signal that it will no longer keep up the pressure: rather the reverse.
Both Berlusconi and his allies continually accuse the magistrates of being leftists: the allegations further weaken a judiciary already hampered by red tape, inertia and political opposition at every level. Berlusconi's allies have seized on the over-enthusiastic work of some magistrates who, armed with only flimsy evidence, pursued allegations of corruption in the 1990s. After five years of reasonably clean government - at national level, at least - Berlusconi is setting an example of determined, aggressive destruction of the law.
At present, Berlusconi is embroiled in a case where his executives are charged with bribing a judge to pave the way for his takeover of a telecoms company. Two of his main lawyers are members of parliament for Forza Italia: one is head of the parliament's judiciary committee. Their efforts to stall procedures are intended to delay the hearing of the case - to the point where, under a statute of limitations, it can no longer be held.
Berlusconi's domination of parliament allows him to use it as an ally in his evasion of the legal process. Charges against him are pending in Spain and Switzerland: so Berlusconi has passed a law that makes it more difficult to present foreign documents as evidence in Italian courts. Further charges are pending of false accounting in Mediaset: a law is mooted that would make this a non-criminal misdemeanor.
One of Berlusconi's earliest and most fervent promises after coming to power was that he would tackle the conflict of interests he faces. The scale of that conflict is close to incredible. When he came to power, Berlusconi owned half of Italy's major TV channels; now, as prime minister, he controls the other half. The present leaders of the state broadcaster RAI are due to step down in a few months - no one is in any doubt that they will be replaced by people from the Berlusconi camp.
Berlusconi defended himself against allegations of a conflict of interest in an interview with Corriere della Sera in September 2000. "The President of the Council [prime minister], who is primus inter pares and co-ordinates the work of the other ministers, has the moral obligation to abstain when there are in front of him decisions which might have a regard to his own interests. I did it during my [previous] period of government and I would behave in the same way today." In fact, Berlusconi did not behave in that way in his last government. He became closely involved in telecommunications issues in which his own interests were strongly in play.
For his fellow heads of state, Berlusconi's most alarming move came early this year, when he fired the pro-Europe foreign minister, Renato Ruggiero. Ruggiero, who had been a high-flying ambassador, head of the World Trade Organisation and a senior executive at Merrill Lynch, came under attack from other ministers - above all, from Umberto Bossi, leader of the Northern League. Bossi regards Europe as a left-wing conspiracy that visits unwelcome laws on Italy. The man Berlusconi named to replace Ruggiero was . . . himself - a step that led to horror in chanceries across the rest of Europe. Foreign ministers in Europe meet each other constantly: Berlusconi does not and cannot do that, and thus delegates to junior ministers, none of whom is empowered to negotiate with more senior colleagues.
France appears the most alarmed by Berlusconi's newest portfolio. The French culture minister, Catherine Tasca, caused a diplomatic row when she said in a radio interview that she hoped Berlusconi would not come to France to attend an event honouring Italian culture, even though he had been invited. In the most recent issue of the news magazine L'Express, Jacques Attali, a former head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development who is close to the Socialist government, wrote - in an article entitled "Berlussolini" - that "Italy has got the most worrying government it has had since the war . . . the entire strategy of [Berlusconi] is that of Il Duce."
Berlusconi's manner of taking over as foreign minister was, again, indicative of the man. On the day he fired Ruggiero, he gave an interview, dedicated mainly to how unpleasant he found the sight of prostitutes in the street, how unsuitable their presence was for his children and how he was thinking of opening brothels. When he came to the Farnesina, the vast Mussolini-era foreign ministry, he told journalists that he would clean up the place, make it more business-like and then hand it over to someone else within six months. "It's all very simple," he explained. Those words have become his motto.
Indeed, it is his invocation of "simplicity" that signals what is most dangerous in Berlusconi. It is an attempt to depoliticise the Italian electorate, aided by a monopolised television. Further, while he avoids extremes, his partners - notably Bossi - rail regularly against immigrants and their criminality; against Europe and its tyrannies; against judges and their communist leanings.
Berlusconi is a new kind of tele-populist, at the head of a rich , sophisticated and major state. And he is successful. As Europe swings to the right, how much of a mark will the mogul billionaire prime minister Berlusconi put upon it?
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