A conqueror, not an end-user

Jun 25th 2009 ROME - From The Economist print edition

Silvio Berlusconi's woes

More embarrassment, but the prime minister toughs it out

AN ELECTION win would gladden most politicians. But Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, was not inclined to lead the celebrations after his party did well in the second round of local polls on June 21st and 22nd. For on June 18th it had emerged that magistrates in Bari were investigating a possible call-girl ring, and that some of its women had been guests of Mr Berlusconi in Rome.
This has pushed questions about Mr Berlusconi’s relations with a young woman from Naples called Noemi Letizia into the background. But it has also meant that he has had to focus more energy on efforts to limit the damage to his reputation than on running Italy or helping its economy.
Mr Berlusconi has turned to his media empire for help. The latest issue of Chi, a weekly magazine published by a firm controlled by Fininvest, Mr Berlusconi’s family holding company (see article), includes nine pages of photographs and text promoting the prime minister as a family man. In it he denies ever paying women for sex, saying: “I never understood where the satisfaction is when you are missing the pleasure of conquest.” Italians have been mostly kept in the dark about the Bari investigation, which has been mentioned only briefly and obliquely on the main television channels. Mr Berlusconi and his children own the three main commercial channels and he exerts strong influence over two of the three owned by the state.
Yet parts of the Roman Catholic Church have now decided that the prime minister is setting a bad example. Famiglia Cristiana, an influential weekly, argues that the church cannot ignore Italy’s moral emergency. In a strongly worded article the magazine accuses Mr Berlusconi’s supporters of defending the indefensible. It attacks Mr Berlusconi’s lawyer for describing prostitutes as “goods”, and a man who pays them as an “end-user”.
Noting that politicians in other countries who transgress moral standards often resign, Famiglia Cristiana asks, “why is Italy so different?” Yet Mr Berlusconi is a man of resolve: comparisons with other countries will cut little ice. Nor will calls for him to go be echoed by politicians in his own party—they owe their positions to him. Mr Berlusconi has never enjoyed much standing in international circles. His latest problems will raise a laugh among his guests at the G8 summit next month. But he is unlikely to quit or be driven out.