Italy: Silvio Berlusconi: Yes, yes, yes, Prime Minister

Beautiful women adorn the Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi. But wiretaps on his telephones reveal that experience and merit weren’t the qualifications he was looking for

Silvio Berlusconi, the 72-year-old Italian prime minister, is no stranger to scandal. Having survived 17 criminal trials without conviction, he has inured the Italian public to feelings of shock or indignation. Last January, the prosecutor’s office in Naples indicted Berlusconi and issued a report containing extracts of over 1,000 wiretapped conversations depicting Italy’s state TV network, RAI, as a casting couch that Berlusconi used to grant favours to aspiring actresses — he called them “le fanciulle mie” (my girls) — and to try to bring down the government. The report had no impact. In the spring elections, Berlusconi returned triumphantly to power after less than two years in opposition.

But in early summer, when Naples prosecutors indicated there were hundreds of other wiretaps, of a personal nature, which they requested be destroyed, Italy’s political-journalistic gossip mill began churning. Forget abuse of power and possible criminal wrongdoing — bring on the sex! Press reports speculated that the tapes contained raunchy comments involving Berlusconi and three female members of his government. Rumours about the prime minister’s shenanigans are often coloured by political allegiance: critics favour stories about a doddering septuagenarian addicted to penis pumps and mysterious injections; supporters paint him as a tireless Don Juan, capable of satisfying two or three women at once.

During the election campaign, Berlusconi bragged about how beautiful his party’s female candidates for parliament were compared with those of his opponents. Referring to Gianfranco Fini, leader of the Chamber of Deputies, and his principal coalition partner, he said of their move to make 30% of their candidates women: “There is a rush to say they’re all my and

The article was lifted from The New Yorker, 11/3/08

That none of this troubles the Italian public says a lot about the opposition Berlusconi faces. “The real drama here is not the sex farce but the total collapse and fragmentation of the centre left,” says one observer. Berlusconi, despite two previous lacklustre terms in office, was re-elected this year because of the failures of the aborted 20-month Prodi government. The fact remains that Italy has seriously declined during the 14 years that Berlusconi has dominated Italian politics. Crony capitalism has proved to be inefficient as well as corrupt. In the early 1990s, Italy’s GDP was about 15% larger than that of Great Britain; now its economy is 23% lower. When Wall Street crashed, and the current financial crisis swept Europe, Berlusconi urged his countrymen to keep buying stocks — he recommended Mediaset, among others — and to keep spending. As an example, he headed off to a disco, telling the crowd there, according to the Rome daily La Repubblica: “If I sleep for three hours, I still have enough energy to make love for another three.”

The financial catastrophe has only increased his power — as prime minister he’ll undoubtedly have control over public monies allocated for private corporate bailouts. Even the rampant sexism of Berlusconi’s behaviour towards women in politics — the use of women as political arm candy — is not without economic consequences. Italy has the smallest percentage of women in the workplace of any leading European nation — which is a serious drag on economic growth and productivity. A recent study by the Bank of Italy showed that if employment levels among Italy’s women were the same as those among men, the country’s GDP would be 17% higher. Other studies link Italy’s birth rate, among the lowest in the world, to the extreme asymmetry between men and women in Italy. That is unlikely to be cured by the royal touch.

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