by Tobias Jones
The result was a classic stitch-up: exciting new programmes were axed from ‘La 7’ and its aspirations were drastically scaled down. The channel’s most recognisable face became Giuliano Ferrara, a Berlusconi henchman who had previously been his spokesman and now edited a newspaper owned by his wife. As if this wasn’t compromise enough, Telecom bought one of Berlusconi’s ailing companies, Edilnord, for $300 million; it offered $160 million for one of Berlusconi’s loss-making ventures, the rival phone-book Pagine Utili; Telecom Italia even removed 40 million euros of advertising from Rai. Effectively Berlusconi had manoeuvred Telecom into a position in which, in order to protect its market share of the telephone industry, it had to offer huge sums to buy his companies, it had to downgrade any ambitions of becoming a main player in television, and had to scale back massively any advertising revenue it offered his competitors. ‘La 7’ was still-born. As always, the losers in the whole saga were the Italian public: what had been of great benefit to Berlusconi implied for the populace at large the survival of protected monopolies and high prices in the telephone market, and, of course, the continuance of Mediaset as the dominant force in television. It was actually in Berlusconi’s interests to continue the traditional cartels and monopolies of the Italian economy precisely because, being subject to government regulation rather than consumer choice, they guaranteed him the leverage of patronage once in power. To break them up would have deprived him of those levers.
It often appeared, during Berlusconi’s administration, as if criminal activity had been given a green light. Legambiente, an environmental group, estimated that illegal building in the first two years (2001 and 2002) of Berlusconi’s second administration increased by 41%. His right hand man, Marcello Dell’Utri, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for Mafia association (the appeal is imminent); another henchman, Cesare Previti, was convicted of bribing judges in a Berlusconi trial and sentenced to 9 years (again, an appeal is pending). As you sat and watched the environmental and moral destruction of Italy it seemed as if the country had been taken over by petty crooks. It’s true that the magistrature can be over-zealous and, one suspects, occasionally politicised, but the fact that 8.68% of the Italian parliament either had criminal records or found themselves in that copious waiting chamber called the ‘register of the investigated’ was distinctly worrying. Those investigations reveal some extraordinary facts: in 2002 a wiretap overheard a Sicilian drug-dealer mentioning a ‘deputy minister’ as the purchaser of a consignment of drugs. Police even observed an aide entering the Ministry of Finance with 20 grammes of cocaine. The consignment itself was unobserved and thus police couldn’t bring a prosecution, but the event highlighted the paper-thin line between powerful politicians and the criminal underworld. That a deputy minister apparently had a drug-habit was less worrying than the fact that his political patch was the troubled island of Sicily. Not for the first time it seemed that good governance was a side issue; the real action was to be found in cutting deals, or coke, in private between friends. As with so many of these scandals, however, the story sunk without trace. The media often seem to collude in cover-ups and the organisation, Reporters Without Borders, has a convincing explanation: comparing press freedoms across the globe, it recently ranked Italy a humiliating 53rd, behind countries like Albania and Madagascar. What would, in most countries, have been front-page news was, in Italy, entirely ignored by large sections of a subservient press.
Given his record in government, one might have expected Berlusconi to suffer a landslide defeat in the 2006 general election. But he had shrewdly and unilaterally passed a new electoral law only months before and, as the weeks went by, it became obvious that the election was on a knife-edge. The election reminded me that it’s precisely what charms so many people on their first visit to Italy – the visual panache, the endless pursuit of style – that causes Italian politics to be so depressing. Politics is conducted not through debate but through gesture and pose. To register their position parliamentarians wear gags or wave flags or turn their backs or hold up slogans. The meticulous attention to appearance and iconography means that one’s politics can be eloquently expressed through clothing and grooming (Berlusconi bans beards amongst his parliamentarians and so on). The famous rainbow peace flags which were draped from millions of balconies during the invasion of Iraq epitomise that tendency to replace political debate with gesture. Important subtleties become lost because politics is merely another part of the country’s fantastic pageantry. Political positions are prismatic, expressed as much through the simplicity of colour as through the subtleties of argument: red, white, blue and so on. The important thing is adhesion to the flag, the belonging to a visual code. What bothers me isn’t the aestheticisation; it’s that the uniform for politics is so strict, almost a straight-jacket which impedes any individual expression or idea. It creates a tribalism in which, for example, a very high percentage of the population are tesserati, enrolled in a party: the Democratici di Sinistra have a powerful membership of 604,655, way above what any political party could hope for in Britain. That, in turn, is part of the reason why there is always such a high turn-out for Italian elections – 83.6% in 2006.
That tendency to turn politics into a teatrino created the most memorable and surreal event of the 2006 election. Berlusconi had, as always, come up with a brilliant psychological strategy: ‘I can’t believe’, he said, explaining why he thought he would win, ‘that there are so many assholes who would vote against their own interests’. Not only did he imply that it took an idiot not to vote for him; he had also raised the spectre, through mentioning ‘interests’, of tax increases under a centre-left government. Berlusconi was brazenly urging voters to do what he does best: look after number one and no-one else. The next day I was walking through the main square in Parma and there were hundreds of people with sandwich boards or A4 print-outs stuck to their chests: ‘I’m an asshole’ they said (un coglione – a very common word – is an asshole or pillock). Up and down the country left-wing supporters had donned the slogan. Attractive girls kept offering me balloons or badges so that I, too, could declare myself a coglione. I was kind of reluctant. In a way, I could understand the gesture; it was like the tendency of the marginalised to make insulting labels their own. But at the same time it was a surreal return to the twisted politics of pageant. Instead of debating policies, people were trying to invent the most memorable gesture of the campaign.
Such theatricality requires a complex stage design. There were 174 officially registered symbols in that election (exactly 100 fewer than in 1996). Flags and banners and posters tried to remind voters of the parties’ symbols: a flame, a rainbow, a dove, a shield, an olive and so on. That astonishing number of symbols (each representing a political party) is part of the reason why political debate is so rare: almost all of the electoral discussion is about coalitions: about who will cut a deal with an adversary or who will be ousted after the election. The central element of debate is partitica, not politica: it’s about party politics, not pure policies as such. Newspaper scoops make parliament sound like a school playground: it’s all about who are now best friends or suddenly sworn enemies.
There are many consequences. For one, the average-sized ballot paper is what they call a scheda-lenzuolo: the size of – only a little exaggeration – a bed-sheet. In local elections in Catania in 2005, the ballot paper was a metre long and contained 1,323 hopeful candidates. And if it’s complicated being a political journalist in Italy, imagine what it’s like for a leader trying to control his backbenchers: in 2006, there were 33 different parties represented in Romano Prodi’s coalition, 35 in that of Silvio Berlusconi. The remarkable thing is that none of the major parties competing in that election existed prior to the 1990s. Parties change name and symbol and coalition so often that the figure-head is more important than the party itself. The fact that personalities are more recognisable than parties means that an election can be between a man who has no political party (Romano Prodi) and a man whose chari
sma and extra-parliamentary power are so gargantuan that he created his own one from scratch (Silvio Berlusconi).
Berlusconi seemed to be running against a man who seemed to lack the killer instinct. The most common adjective used to describe Prodi is pacione, a pejorative way to say he’s placid. He retains that air of a bumbling, benevolent academic. His greatest strength – and it’s a strange kind of strength – is that people underestimate him. Some people think Prodi has raced through the ranks because of his placidity, but his CV is as impressive as Berlusconi’s. Having been a professor at Bologna University, he then became head of the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), the enormous para-statal institute that was parcelled off and privatised under Prodi’s leadership. He became Italian Prime Minister for the first time in 1996, then president of the European Commission. The less flattering analysis of Prodi’s ascent – the one repeatedly alleged by Berlusconi – was that he was a weak front man for much darker forces. During his watch, the privatisation of IRI was dogged by allegations of profiteering as state assets were mysteriously undersold. At the European Commission, corruption continued unchecked throughout Prodi’s presidential tenure, even though he had come to power on the promise to root it out. But Prodi’s great asset is that, almost uniquely for an Italian politician, he’s perceived as honest. Known for his Catholic faith, he’s called a bonaccione, a goody-goody. The problem is that no one is quite sure at what point his perceived goodness becomes blind-eyeism.
There are also murky elements in his past. The most intriguing moment in Prodi’s career came when he tried to be a seer. In 1978, when former Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, Prodi and other university colleagues held a séance to try to discover where he was being held – or where to find his corpse. Many felt that the séance was merely a charade by which university professors could tip off police without incriminating the far-left students or academics who may have given them the information. The spiritualist sitting came up with the name Gradoli, a medieval village near Viterbo. Police raided the place and found nothing. Only later was it realised that there was a Via Gradoli in Rome; and it was there, two weeks after the séance, that a recently abandoned hideout of the Red Brigades was actually discovered. Prodi has never given a satisfactory account, beyond the supernatural, of how he came by the information. During the election Berlusconi’s newspapers dredged up the story to suggest that Prodi had somehow been in contact with the KGB, the Soviet secret services who were thought, by some, to have manoeuvred the Red Brigades.
The election was even closer than predicted. Prodi won the lower house by less than one tenth of one per cent and in the upper house he actually received almost half a million votes less than Berlusconi. There was a beautiful, poetic irony in the fact that had Berlusconi not rewritten the electoral law, and introduced constituencies for Italians abroad, he actually would have won another majority. What the election showed was that Italy, like America, was politically divided down the middle. The country had been polarised into two almost exact halves and an election could be won or lost with a tiny percentage of votes.
It’s hard, in retrospect, to know how much of Berlusconi’s career has been the result of spontaneous inspiration and how much the result of cold-headed calculation. He is always at pains to claim the former, to suggest that he is an off-the-cuff genius, able to alter plans and speeches at a moment’s notice. Rather than reasoned, he says that his success is instinctive, almost the result of lucid madness. His favourite book, from which he quotes regularly and for which he penned his own introduction in a private edition, is Erasmus’ Praise of Folly. In many ways it’s a book which provides a code of conduct for Berlusconi: he relishes the accusation that he’s crazy for it confirms his belief that he is set far above mortals who think clearly and carefully about policies. He takes the political stereotype of ‘thinking outside the box’ to the extreme where, it appears, one stops thinking altogether. Thus, for example, on the eve of the 2006 general election he suddenly declared, without having mentioned it in any manifesto and without having consulted his coalition, that he would abolish ICI (a kind of annual stamp duty on property) if re-elected. It was the act of a desperate man, but one which highlighted his impulsive nature. On other occasions it simply appears that he is delirious, inebriated by power and wealth: he recently ordered the building of a man-made volcano at his Sardinian villa. I’m not being facetious when I express the suspicion that his beloved folly is now bordering on clinical insanity. There’s a delusional side to his character which seems to preclude rational behaviour and which appears to distance him ever further from reality.
Now that he has been voted out of office, many people wonder what legislation Berlusconi passed which was either memorable, historic or wise. I’ve asked many of his supporters, inside and outside parliament, and they genuinely don’t know what to reply. Once the debate is moved from defence of the personality to defence of his policies, there’s normally a poignant silence. They don’t even know what to defend. A few, tellingly, mention the fact that he is the longest-serving post-war Prime Minister as if that, in itself, is achievement enough. The banning of smoking in public places is normally the only other thing they refer to. One or two mention public works like the proposed bridge linking Calabria to Sicily, a bridge over troubled water if ever there was one. But even that project may well now be shelved. In reality, Berlusconi’s legacy is disastrous: public trust in the judiciary, the media, various sporting bodies, financial services and politicians themselves is non-existent. That lack of trust isn’t all Berlusconi’s doing, but he should bear the responsibility for continuously insulting any estate of the realm not under his direct control, from Rai to the then President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Even after a clear electoral result, it took Berlusconi over a week to concede defeat and he continues to delegitimise Romano Prodi at every opportunity.
His real legacy is the creation of an atmosphere in which the knee-jerk reaction to any accusation or investigation is, as I’ve said before, a weary shrug: ‘it’s not that I’m innocent, it’s that everyone else is just as guilty’. It’s a defence that suggests that we are all wasting our time pointing out imperfections because we are all equally imperfect. That was Luciano Moggi’s response to the football-fixing scandal (on which more below); it was, consistently, Berlusconi’s line of defence. A master of the art of vittimismo, he repeatedly suggested that he was under accusation only because magistrates had a grudge against him and that everyone else in Italy was up to something similar. It’s one, short step from that defence to something more corrosive: if you can persuade the public that we’re all as bad as each other, the result is exponential cynicism in which the only infringement truly considered ‘criminal’ is the singling out of someone for investigation. In this topsy-turvy world, the only people who are criminalised are the magistrates who thought they were upholding the law. They suddenly stand accused either of naivety (of not knowing that this is how Italy works) or else of prejudiced betrayal (of knowing that this is how Italy works but deciding to finger only their enemies). It is testament to Berlusconi’s brilliance as an illusionist that millions of Italians now genuinely believe that the magistrature is more pernicious to the country than the Cavaliere himself. That conjuring trick whereby the legal and illegal are suddenly confused was perfectly illustrated to me at dinner a few months ago. As invariably happens, the conversation had come round to Berlusconi and one man, knowing my rather forthright opinions on the matter, eloquently tried to explain why he remained a supporter: ‘You remember what the Duc de la Rouchefoucauld said about hypocrisy? “Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue”. Think about that. You English are hypocritical because you want to disguise any vices, you always pay homage to virtue. But there’s no hypocrisy to most Italians and none at all to Berlusconi.’ It was a reasoning I heard again and again in the years subsequent to this book’s publication: he’s transparent about what he’s doing, and someone who i
s honest about his vices is more trustworthy than someone (usually on the left, or from the moralising parts of northern Europe) who is dishonest about their virtues.
Due to that ‘we’re all just as guilty’ defence, one of the most persistent criticisms of this book from Italians was that I had portrayed Britain as somehow morally superior when actually, readers said, it surely operates in exactly the same way. Is there, they asked with incredulity, any other way? If I couldn’t see comparable corruption back home it was either, they told me, because I was blinded by patriotism or because (more likely, they said) you British are so sophisticated and sly that your corruption is better disguised. I spent a lot of time trying to convince people that there were telling differences in behaviour between both countries, but many Italians refused to believe it. Inevitably, within a couple of years, I was eating humble pie and descending the steps of my metaphorical pulpit: rather than the antidote to Berlusconi’s business methods, a part of the British establishment suddenly appeared a willing, well-paid accomplice. The epistolary equivalent of a smoking gun had been found which led to the heart of the British government. David Mills, a British lawyer married to Tony Blair’s cabinet minister, Tessa Jowell, had written to his accountant asking for tax advice about $600,000 ‘long-term loan or a gift’ from the ‘B organisation’. ‘B’ was widely assumed to refer to Silvio Berlusconi who had, for years, been a client of Mills. (As an expert in corporate law, Mills is thought to have helped create the secretive ‘Group B’, that assortment of 29 companies which have always been absent from the consolidated accounts of Berlusconi’s Fininvest company.) Mills was cross-examined by Italian magistrates in July 2004 and signed a confession in which he admitted that ‘Silvio Berlusconi, in recognition for the way I had protected him in various trials and investigations, had decided to put a sum of money my way’. Mills denies perjury or perverting the course of justice as a witness, but has been unable to explain the provenance of that vast sum of money from overseas. In July 2004, that same summer, Tony Blair was sojourning in Sardinia with Berlusconi who was sporting his infamous beige bandana. Of course, no-one knows what mention was made of Jowell or Mills, but the world, and not just Italy, was beginning to look suspiciously small. Later, as the disgusting loans-for-peerages scandal began to emerge, I had to concede that Britain didn’t exactly represent a moral benchmark against which other countries could be measured.
