Internationally, he may be seen as a gaffe-prone buffoon, but after winning his third Italian general election last weekend, there can be no doubting the 'self-made' media tycoon's flair for political success
IN NOVEMBER 1993, media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, on the verge of his famous choice "to take to the field and involve myself in public life", made a momentous visit to the Foreign Press Club in Rome. He had gone along to express his support for ex-Fascist Gianfranco Fini, then contesting the mayorship of Rome.
He was new to politics in those days and he unwisely allowed himself to be conned into an angry exchange with some militantly left-wing Italian journalists. The exchange provided a rare moment of truth, a moment when the smiling Berlusconi mask was lifted to reveal a very tough, determined and angry man who hissed venomously at his critics, shouting "Vergogna, vergogna" ("shame on you") at them. It had been suggested that Berlusconi had a vicious temper and that he was someone who did not suffer fools gladly. Watching him that day, 15 years ago, it was not hard to believe such an assessment.
Since then, Silvio Berlusconi, the man who was elected prime minister of Italy for the third time last weekend, has learned a lot about politics. It would be very hard to rattle his cage in public these days. For the broad swathe of international public opinion, 71-year-old Berlusconi can seem to be something of a "clown", a lightweight who is all smiles, implanted hair, face lifts and eternal suntan.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sure, he has had his hair redone and he has made the odd visit to the plastic surgeon. Yet, "clowns" do not end up as one of the 100 wealthiest men in the world (US magazine Forbes puts him at number 90) and head of a €6 billion business empire that includes advertising, insurance, food, construction, publishing, AC Milan football club and, of course, his three nationwide commercial TV channels. "Clowns" do not invent a political party and then stage a sensational success at a general election just two months later (in March, 1994). "Clowns" do not win three general elections over a 14-year period, returning to office for the third time at the age of 71.
Foreign observers often look at Berlusconi, shake their heads and ask why, in the name of heaven and democracy, do Italians vote for him? Does the politician Berlusconi not represent the very embodiment of a gigantic "conflict of interests" in his other role as business and media tycoon? Has he not featured in at least 10 different investigations (and six trials) over the past 12 years, where he has stood accused (but not convicted) of corruption, bribery of judges and tax inspectors, false accounting, money laundering, tax evasion and illegal party financing? Surely such a person is, as British weekly The Economist regularly puts it, "unfit to govern"?
NOT FOR ITALIANS, he isn't. Berlusconi stepped into the political breach in 1994 at exactly the moment that there was a huge political vacuum to be filled. The early 1990s saw the Christian Democrat (DC) party, the party that had dominated all postwar Italian governments, swept aside by a tsunami provoked by the fall of the Berlin Wall and by the Tangentopoli (Bribesville) scandal, which concluded that all the ruling parties of the previous 40 years had systematically looked for kick-backs for personal and/or party coffers in return for public contracts.
As Italy went to the polls back in 1994, the contest initially looked like a walkover for the PDS, the new-look, new-name, post-Berlin Wall version of the old Communist Party (PCI) - until, that is, Berlusconi stepped in.
Ending months of speculation, on the evening of Wednesday January 26th, 1994, Berlusconi gave a nine-minute, presidential-style address from his study in his magnificent 18th-century San Martino villa at Arcore, north of Milan. The address, carried live by both state broadcaster RAI and his own trio of TV channels, has become the stuff of Italian legend.
"I have chosen to take to the field and involve myself in public life because I don't want to live in an illiberal country, governed by immature forces and by men (the ex-communists) who are still closely linked to a past that proved both a political and economic disaster . . ." Suddenly, there was an alternative to the ex-Commies. A brilliant campaign, in which Berlusconi for the first time treated us to his own particular blend of Peronist/Dunnes Stores psychobabble and sales patter, did the rest. To a very large extent, that sales patter is still doing the business.
Over lunch at government house two years ago, your correspondent asked Berlusconi if he felt that his ownership of the very successful AC Milan football team had helped in his political rise and rise. No, he said. While not underestimating the huge boost AC Milan had been for his winning image, he suggested that in 1994 he had merely stepped into an historical vacuum: "The reality is that I owe my political success to the historical context of 1994."
If history played its part, then quite clearly so too has his often shameless use of his huge media power. When he is in government, Berlusconi directly or indirectly controls 90 per cent of Italian terrestrial TV, given that the state broadcaster is routinely manipulated by successive governments.
Key Berlusconi appointments mean that news coverage gets "packaged" - take the infamous July 2003 day when (then) prime minister Berlusconi addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Annoyed by criticism from German Euro MP Martin Schulz, Berlusconi told him that he knew of someone who was making a film in Italy about a Nazi concentration camp and that he would recommend Schulz for the part of camp guard. Although it was widely written up in the Italian dailies, the quote appeared in only a much-reduced form on that evening's news. It was only two years ago when film-maker Nanni Moretti made Il Caimano, a film about Berlusconi, that most Italians saw the full exchange for the first time.
If history and his media empire have done much for Berlusconi, then a third factor in his continuing success story has been the chronic, mind-boggling incompetence of the Italian left and centre-left. At no stage, during seven years in government, has the centre-left made a serious attempt to deal with Berlusconi's "conflict of interest".
Centre-left spokespeople defend themselves by saying that to have done so would have been to move against the leader of the opposition and would have looked, dare we say it, "Stalinist". Observers, such as your correspondent, would point out, too, that for most of those seven years, the centre-left governments comprised a rattle-bag of such radically contrasting opinions that not even a patently honest and talented man like the former European Commission president Romano Prodi could make head nor tail of them.
Not for nothing, a key element in Berlusconi's success last weekend was the sense of disappointment felt by leftist voters, many of whom, especially in Northern Italy, switched to the federalist Northern League while others simply stayed away.
Confirming, too, the sorry impression that the centre-left simply cannot get its act together was the Naples garbage crisis, an electoral gift to the Berlusconi campaign. The point about the Campania garbage crisis is that it has been going on, in one shape or another, since 1994. The problem is that the city of Naples and the Campania region have been governed by centre-left figures almost without interruption since 1993.
HISTORY, MEDIA POWER and a spectacularly incompetent centre-left do not, however, provide a full explanation of the Berlusconi phenomenon. There is a fourth factor, one that will be familiar to Irish readers. Let us call it the "cute whore" dimension.
Put simply, there are many Italians who are willing to overlook Berlusconi's "colourful" track record because they feel that, if he could do so well for himself, he will one day do equally well for them. Oft-repeated accusations that his original funding came from the Mafia or that he entered politics to save his own business empire rather than to do his civic duty carry little weight.
In a country where many feel that the state is little more that a huge bureaucratic hindrance of unfair proportions (the North works hard to pay taxes that the South either wastes or gives to the Mafia), Berlusconi is seen by many as a self-made miracle. (Never mind that he had some very important and very political helping hands, such as late disgraced Socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi, along the way).
His populist touch - this week he has said that his first priorities in government will be the garbage crisis in Naples and the fate of ailing state carrier Alitalia - regularly finds its target. In a sense, he has clearly created a new right-wing, mass democratic force in Italian politics, call it People of Freedom or Forza Italia or whatever new name he may invent.
No one in Italian politics has a better "nous" than Berlusconi. Electioneering is the thing he does best.
Yet now it is time for him to govern. In his last five-year period in office, he lost much time enacting ad personam legislation seemingly aimed at getting himself off various judicial hooks. This time, he will not have that distraction, nor indeed excuse.
Can he deliver? Can he get Italy's sluggish economy (0.3 per cent growth) going? Can he do anything for a country that seems hopelessly stuck in a very negative moment - culturally, politically, socially? Does not Italy need more than his first populist package - the elimination of property tax on the family home, a €1,000 bonus for babies, tax-free overtime pay and the building of the Ponte di Messina, between Messina on Sicily and the mainland? One thing seems certain, as evidenced by the annoyance of Spanish women cabinet ministers this week, offended by his remarks about the female quota in government. Namely, things are going to be lively around here again.
"Many Italians are willing to overlook Berlusconi's 'colourful' track record because they feel that, if he could do so well for himself, he will one day do equally well for them
CV SILVIO BERLUSCONI
Who is he?A wealthy, 71-year-old media tycoon and twice Italian prime minister who heads a €6 billion business empire, yet at the same time leads the Italian centre-right with a purpose-designed party founded by himself.
Why is he in the news?Because he ran out a surprisingly emphatic winner of last weekend's Italian general election, the fifth contested by him since 1994, to thus earn himself a third time of office as prime minister.
Most likely to say:"The dirty red commies are still under the bed, except that now they call themselves il Partito Democratico (PD), and that's why I won the election."
Least likely to say:"I was wrong." Berlusconi does not do self-doubt.