Gaither Stewart, European Correspondent
(Rome) Last night outside the Rome residence of the today ex- Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi former protesters sang the Communist partisan song, the joyous Bella Ciao. The crowds were there in a sudden bitter cold to mark the final, drawn-out, reluctant resignation of one of the simultaneously most hated and most admired, envied and feared Italian government leaders since his model, Benito Mussolini, was hanged by his feet on a Milan square.
LEFT: “Berlusco” politicking till the bitter end.
After 1284 days of mal-government, the last year of which was no government at all, Berlusconi, after long negotiations with his own Party of Freedom in an attempt to save it from crumbling into many contentious pieces, with the scowl of recent days engraved in his no less crumbling features, submitted his letter of adieu to President Giorgio Napolitano. During the interval between his first, fake, step-by-step semi-resignation by instalments of two days earlier, not only was the ex-Premier trying to save his party (he created it, named it and chose its leaders, its colors, its hymn Thanks That There’s Silvio) and his coalition.
Berlusconi was trying to save also himself from the multiple of judicial processes that await him. As he has threatened before and according to rumors in recent days, what at first seemed like another of his jokes, he is perhaps considering escape to one of his villas around the world, this time in Antigua. One recalls the 1993 flight of the ex-Socialist Premier Bettino Craxi accused of corruption to Tunisia where he died. As an irony of fate, the man who was instrumental in the creation of both Berlusconi’s fortune and his political parabola now again reappears to suggest a solution to Berlusconi: physical flight.
The center-left opposition parties today claim credit for bringing down Berlusconi. Though it is true that the unifying factor of the center-left coalition parties has been its unrelenting anti-Berlusconism, in reality the stock markets, international mistrust of Italy and the ridicule Berlusconi’s antics on the international stage brought down on the nation, not the opposition, brought Berlusconi to his knees. Europe ruled thumbs down on the evil clown. I noticed that suddenly, in recent days, when the Premier-industrialist, Italy’s richest man, saw his companies lose some 20% of their market value he began to give in to the inevitable. He was unable to govern, unable to make the reforms or to remake himself and overcome international mistrust of Berlusconian Italy and recreate stock market confidence in the world’s (alleged) 7th economy. He was forced to bow—thought scowling and childishly kicking and screaming—to the nomination of the economist Mario Monti to replace him. His hope is that a temporary government of technocrats can do what he and his band of low calibre criminals, delinquents, and fascists—each and everyone named by Berlusconi himself—could not do: make of Italy a normal country.
Berlusconi has exited from the center stage of Italian politics. Though even that is uncertain, for his unlimited vanity never admits of failure and defeat. In any case he will linger in the wings for some time, ready to leap back onto the stage and claim what he believes is rightfully his, his, his, his, i.e. Italy itself. The most that one can say is that for at least some months he will not be the Prime Minister of Italy.
More astute observers note however that even if Berlusconi vanishes, Berlusconism will remain like a malignant cancer. It will take decades to outgrow and eliminate the rot of the dirty, cheap vulgarity Berlusconi leaves as his legacy to 60,000,000 Italians. Italy will now have to pay dearly for the some 17 bizarre years of occupation by Berlusconism. In Berlusconiland, politicians and priests, scientists and journalists, lawyers and judges, half of Parliament and entire political parties became Berlusconi’s employees. He personally organized the piazzas in protest against the judiciary for daring to judge him, the untouchable. He passed 25 laws to protect himself (laws ad personam) from the “Communist” judiciary.
Berlusconi’s intent from the start was to crush and demolish the state as such in order to defend his own personal interests. For Berlusconi, everyone in disaccord was Communist. Communist public schools taught Communist propaganda. The magistracy was Communist. The free press was Communist. He bought his own newspapers and journalists to oppose the widespread Communist conspiracy. His system of government consisted of vague grandiose announcements and pronouncements and never fulfilled promises.
The fear today is that the social disease of Berlusconism in fact reflects the nation itself. Today, one day after his resignation, the 17 years of the political presence of Berlusconi the man already seem like national madness. In that sense an entire generation will be required to eradicate the roots of the disease that became highly contagious, the degradation of morals and values, the greediness and rapacity, the demeaning and discrediting of traditional Italian generosity and sense of equality of the rich and the poor. The original sin of Berlusconism remains its inherent immorality.
Senior Editor Gaither Stewart serves as European Correspondent for The Greanville Post and Cyrano’s Journal Today. His latest novel (part of the Europe Trilogy) is Time of Exile.
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