Italy’s Elections: The End of Berlusconi’s Reign of Corruption?



Silvio Berlusconi

By Jamie Douglas

For all too many years now, Italy has suffered under the autocratic rule of the local equivalent of a Rupert Murdoch gone completely mad, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Like Murdoch, Berlusconi owns a media empire, the dimensions of which should have never been allowed, as he gained unprecedented control over the press in Italy, always suppressing articles that were critical of him or would have exposed his liaisons with underage prostitutes and the orgies that were organized for him by third parties.

Now don’t get me wrong. Orgies are an age-old tradition in Italy, dating back to Roman times, and when in Rome...

This past weekend saw the culmination of all that, in the election results rendered by the people of Italy. His handpicked candidate for the mayoral race in Milan resulted in a devastating rout in his hometown, where a leftist defeated the current candidate by 55% to 45%. But things got even worse for him in Naples, the garbage capital of Italy (seriously – they have major problems with garbage collection there), where a relative unknown newcomer defeated Berlusconi’s right-wing candidate by 65% to 35%.

Italy has had a rocky road to democracy since the end of WWII, having suffered through more than sixty different changes in leadership. In 1994, during another upheaval, Silvio Berlusconi was elected as Prime Minister for the first time, but he was forced to step down in January of 1995, due to the withdrawal of support of one single member of the coalition. During his time out of office, he continued to acquire all types of media companies, gaining ever-greater control of public opinion by heralding all the news good to him and his party, while oppressing dissenting opinions. He also used his editorial platforms to attack the judiciary, which because of his many malfeasances was always having some investigation or another open against him, by calling judges “a cancer of democracy.”

As Berlusconi, Italy’s true cancer on democracy, is losing his grip on power, his problems with his “Bunga Bunga” parties are multiplying by the day. His turbo vixen dental hygienist, 25 year old Nicole Minetti, who he appointed as a regional counselor, is currently facing charges of solicitation for having procured at least thirty three prostitutes for the Prime Minster, amongst whom is the underage Moroccan heartbreaker, Karima El Mahroug, who according to her passport and the prosecutors, was barely 17 when she was paid for sex by Berlusconi. Prosecutors, in laying out their case, also claim that Minetti, herself a former TV starlet, along with two associates, recruited all the girls for the wild parties held at his villa near Milan. All of the young women invited were models, beauty contestants, and TV personalities, and were all willing participants in this lofty endeavor.

Berlusconi’s solution: Simply move the cases away from the judges that “have it in for him” (his words) to areas that are more friendly to him while short circuiting the judicial processes in the many cases where he is facing trial for corruption, bribery, financial misdeeds involving his business empire, tax evasion, and more.

At the speed with which Italian justice moves, it will be years before there will be a final resolution to all of his legal problems, and he will be an octogenarian, unlikely to face any prison time, in spite of Italy’s proud history of hanging the people they formerly shouted their voices raw for in the public square, thereby absolving themselves of any complicity with the deceased despots.

Jamie Douglas

San Rafael, Mendoza

Where the Malbec Wine is Always Fine!

 

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