The Dark Heart of Italy (27 page)

Thereafter, Berlusconi refused (temporarily) to appear on the RAI TV channels, as did those in his coalition. They retreated to the safety of Mediaset journalists. His allies spoke of cleaning up the ranks of RAI after the election. Others urged Italians to refuse to pay their licence fees to RAI, since it was clearly Communist. Berlusconi’s own Mediaset television channels resorted to impassioned pleas not to believe the allegations: on ‘Rete 4’, for example, the newscaster Emilio Fede couldn’t contain his outrage, banging his fists on his desk as he denounced the dirty tricks of the left. Each time he tried to introduce another story he couldn’t do it, he started frowning, almost on the verge of tears, and returned to defend his boss, Silvio Berlusconi. Not for the first time, the nation’s television channels became, like the country at large,
polarised into shrill declarations of love or loathing for Berlusconi. The actual issue, of whether there was any truth in the allegations, of whether Berlusconi really was dangerously close to collusion with organised crime, became lost in the hysteria.

Some saw sufficient grounds to indict
Il
Cavaliere
, suggesting that suspicion really is ‘the antechamber of truth’ as far as the Mafia is concerned. Weeks before the election, the cover of Britain’s
The Economist
showed a photograph of Berlusconi, with the headline ‘Why Berlusconi is Unfit to Govern Italy’. The article, which caused an even bigger storm than the
The Whiff of Money
book, duly proceeded to list the crimes for which
Il
Cavaliere
had been recently investigated: ‘money-laundering… connections with the Mafia’ and so on. ‘The public’s acquittal,’ the magazine warned, could become ‘a terrible condemnation of the electorate.’ The reply from
Forza Italia
was the same as usual: a conspiracy of left-wing intellectuals had it in for the honest, family-man, Silvio Berlusconi.
The Economist
, far from being a sober organ of financial analysis, was a ‘Communist publication,’ edited by wannabe Stalinists. (
The Economist
was swiftly issued with a writ for damages in Italy. The publication is currently fighting a libel action brought by Berlusconi arising from the cover article. Over a year later, in May 2002, both Berlusconi and Marcello Dell’Utri would be acquitted by the Palermo courts of any involvement in the murder of Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone; the judge noted, however, as he ‘archived’ the case, that ‘links have been ascertained betweeen companies which are part of Fininvest and people who are in various ways linked to Cosa Nostra.’ Those links, wrote the judge, meant that the accusations of penitent
mafiosi
who had implicated Berlusconi were ‘not entirely implausible’.)

Italians of eighteen and above elect 630
deputati
(aged 25 or over) of the parliamentary camera. Those of 21 and above also elect 315
senatori
(40 or older) in the
senato
(there are nine ‘senators for life’, the equivalent of life peers, either former Prime Ministers or Presidents, or else dignitaries like Gianni Agnelli, head of FIAT, Juventus, Ferrari and so on). The eventual make-up of the
parliament is decided both by a first-past-the-post system (75%) and by proportional representation (25%).

On the surface, the election was a presidential show-down between – on the left – the former mayor of Rome, Francesco Rutelli, and – on the right –
Il
Cavaliere
. Dozens of political parties were lined up in one coalition or the other. The bucolic left-wing coalition was called ‘the olive’ and was made up of ‘the sunflower’ (greens and socialists), ‘the daisy’ (Democrats, the Popular Party, the Union of Democrats of Europe, a former Prime Minister’s ‘Dini list’), ‘the oak’ (the former Communist party, now called Democrats of the Left), and one half of the Communist party proper (The Italian Communists). The ‘Pole of Liberties’ was Berlusconi’s rival, right-wing coalition, made up of his own
Forza Italia
party, the ‘post-Fascist’ National Alliance, and the separatists/federalists of the Northern League. Other parties supporting him were from the ‘White Flower’, made up of the two broadly Catholic parties, the CCD and the CDU. Various fringe parties (the Refounded Communist Party, the ‘Di Pietro list’, the Radicals) refused to adhere to either coalition, preferring to go it alone and barter with their votes in the aftermath of 13 May.

Given that confusing plethora of parties, few ordinary voters understood those coalitions, let alone what they stood for. It was hard even to know what had happened in the last five years: during the 13th parliament of the Italian republic (1996–2001) 158 politicians had changed political allegiance, and the country had had three different Prime Ministers (Romano Prodi, Massimo D’Alema, and Giuliano Amato) presiding over four different governments. Political debate and front page scoops had often simply been about who was building or breaking which coalition, about who was redesigning their party flag or currently reinventing themselves as a politician of the right, or of the left. Smears, scandals, accusations and court-cases had piled up. During the election, leading politicians were arrested or investigated: one Democrat of the Left in Tuscany was arrested for taking bribes; a
Forzista
in Calabria was sentenced to five years for collusion with the local Mafia; another
Forzista
in Milan was arrested, accused of extortion.
The President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, appealed for dignity, but the strange, hysterical campaigning continued.

Short, always wearing a double-breasted suit, smiling and suntanned, Silvio Berlusconi was obviously viewed by the left as a very Faustian figure, and his probable victory on 13 May was seen in apocalyptic terms. Even cultured political commentators on the right, however, were dismayed. Italy, they said, had never produced a ‘normal’ right-wing party. Mussolini’s Fascism, the Christian Democrats’ ‘Christian Democracy’ were both, by anyone’s reckoning, highly unorthodox political movements. Berlusconi’s
partito
-
azienda
, his business-political party, appeared, if anything, even more idiosyncratic. Indro Montanelli was a right-wing, nonagenarian writer who many saw as the soul of Italian journalism (he used to be editor of Berlusconi’s paper,
Il
Giornale
, before resigning because of editorial interference). In the weeks before the election he called the
Forza Italia
leader a ‘systematic liar’, someone whose methods are ‘of the truncheon … akin to those of Fascism’. (Berlusconi didn’t directly answer the accusation, although his defenders did suggest that Montanelli, by then in his 90s, was simply senile and embittered.)

That, indeed, was the next accusation: that the Pole of Liberties was an umbrella under which many closet Fascists were gathered. The National Alliance is simply the new name of the
Movimento
Sociale Italiano
, the post-war Fascist party. Its leader, Gianfranco Fini, is a chess player, and always appears measured, calm and cerebral. In the ranks of his party, however, are many who have dark pasts, former Fascists who, according to the accusations, took a very active part in the country’s
anni di piombo
. The granddaughter of
Il
Duce
, Alessandra Mussolini, is another of the party’s ‘big names’.

More extreme, and more maverick, was Umberto Bossi, the gravel-voiced leader of the Northern League. He’s always decked out in the party’s green livery and its symbol: a wagon wheel. He’s the prime example of what is called
qualunquismo
– ‘everymanism’ – a term for crude, vote-grabbing populism. His electoral base is the rich, industrialised north which views Rome
and the south as the epitome of all that’s wrong with Italy. (‘Garibaldi didn’t unite Italy, he divided Africa’ goes the rhetoric.) When a piece of land at Lodi was recently set aside for a mosque, Bossi’s
Leghisti
protested, marching under banners proclaiming ‘our pigs have urinated there’. It was Bossi who, withdrawing his support from the government, caused Berlusconi’s downfall in 1994.

Meanwhile, Francesco Rutelli toured the country in a specially designed ‘Olive’ train (he is, after all, a former green). Next to the cult of Berlusconi, Rutelli – youngish but greying hair – appeared well-meaning, efficient, but lacklustre. Nor could anyone remember quite what the left had done in five years of government. Rutelli, for better or for worse, wasn’t even part of that government, but mayor of Rome. Many incumbent government ministers (Tullio De Mauro, the Minister for Education, Umberto Veronesi, the Health Minister) weren’t even standing for re-election, prompting the suspicion that they were abandoning a derailed train.

It was hard to know quite where and why it went so wrong for the left. When Romano Prodi won the 1996 election, it seemed that Italy’s
bipartitismo
imperfetto
(with the Christian Democrats, or the right, permanently in power, and the Communists, or the left, permanently excluded) had finally, after fifty years, come to an end. In power, however, those Communists (or, as they’re now called, Democrats of the Left) and their allies proved to be strict monetarists, determined to prepare the country very painfully for entry into the Euro. In their five years in government, net borrowing as a percentage of GDP had fallen from over 7% to 0.3%; the national debt had fallen, as had inflation. Only taxes were increased, or new ones introduced, like the ‘tax for Europe’. Most suggest that Prodi’s government, and those which followed, had been very successful financially and fiscally. The consequence, however, is that they were, politically, a disaster.

The left’s greatest blunder, however, was simply tactical. Raising the spectre of Berlusconi’s conflict of interests should have been the Olive coalition’s winning game plan, but having ignored the problem for five years in government, they were
unable suddenly to argue that it was a pressing problem. Massimo D’Alema, the man who replaced Romano Prodi as Prime Minister once the Refounded Communists withdrew from the coalition, had effectively been ‘made’ by a handful of votes from Francesco Cossiga (a former Christian Democrat, and a coalition partner even less reliable than Bossi). In an attempt to strengthen his hand, D’Alema, an astute, intelligent but old-school politician, had been locked in bipartisan, bicameral constitutional debates with Berlusconi. The intention was to give Italy once and for all a powerful executive and a presidential leader, no longer hostage to the small PR parties. As leaders of the country’s two largest political movements, D’Alema and Berlusconi clearly had interests in common when it came to the constitutional talks. Meetings (480 hours of them) dragged on for years, during which time legislation against Berlusconi was unthinkable. D’Alema, apparently desperate to pass a new electoral law, had thus leant over backwards to accommodate his rival in order to reach an accord. Having appeared so cosy with the leader of
Forza Italia
in the late 1990s, D’Alema’s subsequent suggestion – after the constitutional talks had collapsed and as an election loomed – that Berlusconi really was a Faustian figure after all lacked any credibility.

The difference between the two presidential candidates was underlined at a rally of
Confindustria
(the equivalent of the CBI) in Parma. Rutelli, as desperate as all the other politicians to appear
anglosassone
, stumbled through an economic analysis in English which no one understood. The next day, Berlusconi (relayed live on Mediaset channels) was the usual slick showman: relaxed and jokey, a man at ease amongst his fellow-businessmen. He invoked ‘Signora Thatcher’, and promised sweeping tax-cuts (he announced his intention to reduce the top rate of income tax from 50% to 33%, and to slash inheritance tax). He received ecstatic applause. Watching him, one could understand the attraction. He is, like Bettino Craxi before him, a charismatic leader amidst a sea of grey politicians and confusing coalitions. Former members of Craxi’s socialist party subsequently endorsed
Il
Cavaliere
and his post-Fascist and federalist allies.

Berlusconi also benefited from the fact that the anti-establishment vote in Italy is always influential. Politicians are held in such low esteem that anyone who appears outside the old guard is immediately more appealing than the incumbent government. (One politician from the centre-left coalition admitted recently that any politician who denied taking backhanders was a
bugiardo
matricolato
, an ‘out-and-out liar’.) So it was one of Berlusconi’s strengths to be able to portray himself as the non-politician, leading a party of entrepreneurs not politicians. (About 90% of the parliamentary intake of
Forza Italia
deputies in 1994 had never been in parliament before.) From that perspective, Berlusconi’s $14 billion private wealth became an asset, not a hindrance, to democracy: he openly argued in the run-up to the election (and one can see his point, if not necessarily believe it) that he was so rich that he was perfectly placed to become a statesman (meaning, no one could bribe me or buy me, so I can be trusted). Poor politicians are corrupt, the argument went, rich ones don’t need to be.

Another advantage was that, as Machiavelli recognised, Italy seems ever to be ‘waiting to see who can be the one to heal her wounds… See how Italy beseeches God to send someone to save her from those barbarous cruelties and outrages; see how eager and willing the country is to follow a banner, if only someone will raise it…’ There is, in Italy, a yearning for a redeemer, for a politician who will raise a new banner and ‘cleanse those sores’ arising from years of misrule. That was the appeal of Mussolini in 1922, or of the Christian Democrats in 1948. Each new political regime is seen as a bright dawn before being furiously rejected when that dawn appears as false as the last (which, naturally, only increases the yearning for another redeemer).

Beyond the symbolism of the non-politician healing wounds, Berlusconi’s bed-rock of support came from the business community. Even the most left-wing commentator would accept that Italy’s labour laws beggar belief. Contracts run on for ‘time immemorial’, and it is virtually impossible for any company with more than fifteen employees to lay anybody off. Wages might be measly, but at least they are still guaranteed for life. Companies
are then forced to pay hefty pension contributions for any full-time employee, a figure that, given that anyone can claim a state pension at 56, is crippling to Italy’s small businesses. (No one mentioned that pensions would fall, and the retirement age rise, if Berlusconi’s reforms were put in place.)