Silvio Berlusconi’s parallel world

Any Western politician in Berlsuconi’s position would have resigned. Who would have survived the international embarrassment of going down in history as the man who coined the phrase ‘bunga-bunga’ – defined in Urbandictionary.com as “an erotic ritual which involves a powerful leader and several naked women”.

Even in the absence of allegations of sexual misconduct, the revelation that Berlusconi called the Milanese police in May, after a 17-year-old belly dancer was arrested for stealing €3,000, asking for her release and explaining – falsely – that she was Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's niece… would have been enough for any politician to call it a day.

Added to this evidence that he consorted with escorts – some of whom dressed up as sexy nurses or policewomen, while real police officers had to escort them back home -  would have been too embarrassing for any politician in the western world.

But not in Italy.

Perhaps it has to do with a macho Italian culture perpetuated by Berslusconi’s own TV stations, in which scantly dressed women are an omnipresent feature even during mid-afternoon family entertainment programmes.  In this parallel world a very fine line separates reality from “reality TV”, where new celebrities manufactured on a daily basis, lay bare their sex lives to an inquisitive public.

But more fundamentally, Berlsuconi has managed to create another parallel reality in which he is the one being persecuted by a clique of  “red” magistrates who are out for his blood. Once he described himself as the “Jesus Christ of Italian politics” who sacrifices himself for everyone. 

On the other hand the judges were described as being   “mentally deranged” and subversive.

The more magistrates delve in to his personal life in their pursuit of what might, in the end, be an elusive sex crime (having had sex with a 17 year-old-girl), the more Berlusconi can demonstrate that previous investigations into more serious matters like corruption were the result of a plot to subvert the electoral will of the Italians who voted for him.

Perhaps for a significant number of Italians it is more comforting to believe that they have elected a persecuted martyr rather than an unscrupulous con man interested only in saving his own skin from justice.

No wonder Berlusconi’s first reaction to Ruby-Gate was that he was having a lot of fun. He does not care how much international embarrassment for his country he has created by his own actions. In the parallel world of Berlusconi it is not him but the left wing judges through their persecution who have exposed Italy to international ridicule.

Berslusconi probably has reasons to believe that the case being mounted against him rests on the testimonies and  telephone recordings of less than credible escorts and pimps.  If the sex crime eludes the judges, Berlsuconi may well present this as proof of innocence in far more serious crimes, of which he has already been found guilty.

A court sentence already shows that he had bribed his lawyer, David Mills, so that he could avoid conviction on corruption charges and hang on to "huge profits made from the conclusion of illicit corporate and financial operations". 

But probably the case will fall into prescription before reaching a conclusion.

His most trusted collaborator Marcello Dell Ultri has been convicted of tax fraud, false accounting, and complicity in conspiracy with the Mafia.

And there is a long list court cases in which he never proved his innocence but was released either due to prescription, or because he changed the goalposts when he was Prime Minister.

In 1990, before even before he entered the political fray, Berlusconi was found guilty of perjury regarding his membership in "Propaganda 2" – commonly known as "P2" – a sinister far right Masonic lodge led by Licio Gelli aimed at subverting Italian democracy and replacing it with authoritarian rule.

However the court did not proceed to sentence him because the wrongdoing had been extinguished by an amnesty passed in 1989.

He was handed a two-year, four-month sentence for donating €10 million to former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi via an offshore bank account codenamed "All Iberian". But he was acquitted because of the statute of limitations expired before the appeal was completed.

Berlusconi was also acquitted on various charges of false accounting, simply because of a new law which made false accounting illegal only in cases where there is a specific damaged party reporting the fact to the authorities.

This new law was passed by Berlusconi's parliamentary majority after the beginning of the trial, and was claimed by the opposition to be an ad personam law, i.e. aimed at acquitting Berlusconi.

Yet despite this mountain of evidence against him Berlusconi has managed to win three elections. He has also recently survived the defection of his closest ally Gainfranco Fini, winning a confidence vote in parliament in December thanks to the defection of two opposition MPs who previously formed part of the most radical of the anti-Berlusconi parties, amidst allegations that he actually bought their vote.

And beyond his judicial troubles Berlusconi has fundamentally changed Italy.

He has normalised the racist and xenophobic discourse of the Lega Nord whose second in command Roberto Calderoli has last week responded to criticism by an Italian MP born in Congo by saying: “a back man cannot be an Italian let alone a parliamentarian.”

He has distanced his country from normal Western democracies by consorting with authoritarian despots like Vladmir Putin and Muammar Gaddafi.

He even went as far as recounting a joke denigrating the avidity of the Jewish people.

And while ignoring the Vatican’s protests on sending back migrants to Libya (and for more sobriety in his personal life), he has posed as a defender of the cross against a European court judgement on the exposure of the crucifix in public spaces.

Berlusconi has repeatedly denigrated gays, and went as far as passing a law forcing Eluana Englaro to remain on life support after 16 years in a coma: prompting the intervention of President Napolitano who refused to sign it.

Yet he is still credited for giving his country stability. And truly Italy has been saved  from the ravages of the latest international crisis, mainly thanks to the fiscal  prudence of his finance Minister Gulio Tremonti who kept Berlusconi’s populist instincts at bay.

But Italy’s economy and social structure remain unreformed, and its best minds continue to find greener pastures abroad feeling even more embarrassed by what they read on the international papers.