John Hooper in Rome
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 June 2009 19.59 BST
Italy's head of state today begged his country's politicians and journalists to safeguard its international reputation by suspending discussion of controversial issues in the run-up to next week's summit of the G8 rich nations, which Silvio Berlusconi will chair against a background of sensational allegations about his sex life. "Given the sensitivity of this international event, it would be quite right to call a truce in the controversies between now and the G8," President Giorgio Napolitano said.
He did not identify which controversies he had in mind, but Berlusconi's alleged involvement with callgirls and friendship with a teenage would-be actress and model have been at the centre of public attention for more than a month. The prime minister last night endorsed Napolitano's suggestion.
"We hope the head of state's invitation is taken up," he added. Berlusconi swept aside speculation that his government might fall, saying it was "the most stable and secure in the entire west".
He was speaking at a press conference in Naples aboard the Fantasia, a cruise liner that was to have hosted the summit delegations before the prime minister switched the venue from Sardinia to the earthquake-struck inland city of L'Aquila.
Deploying a welter of statistics, diagrams and artists' impressions, the prime minister assured the media that his illustrious guests would nevertheless be received in style at a large revenue guard barracks hastily converted for the occasion. He said the site would soon have 121,000 square metres of gardens with 6,850 bushes and extensive lawns.
Picking up on the theme of the danger to Italy's international standing, the prime minister said: "We shall certainly not make a bad impression."
Napolitano said he had had a "wide-ranging" conversation with Berlusconi about the G8 summit. But it was unclear if it had taken place before or after he launched his highly unusual appeal for what in effect would be a suspension of normal democratic life in Italy.
Magistrates in the southern city of Bari are questioning about 30 women, some of whom are alleged to have been paid by a local businessman to attend five parties held by Berlusconi. One has said that a paid escort slept with Italy's married prime minister last November.
The controversy surrounding the alleged callgirls has temporarily obscured an earlier scandal over Berlusconi's mysterious relationship with an 18-year-old Neapolitan girl who applied for a job on one of his television channels. The prime minister said he would make a statement to parliament about his friendship with the girl, but has never done so.
There was no immediate reaction to Napolitano's initiative from the leader of Italy's biggest opposition group, the Democratic party (PD), which appeared to be split on the issue.
The head of the party in the lower house of parliament, Antonello Soro, said the president was "absolutely right", but added that Berlusconi, with his "statements and continuous accusations", had been responsible for much of the controversy. A PD backbencher, Marco Beltrandi, said however that he was shocked by the president's appeal, which would be "unacceptable anywhere". Antonio Di Pietro, leader of the smaller Italy of Principles party, dismissed the idea that the country's image could be damaged by further controversy. "The whole world laughs at us," he said. "We should resolve this cancer that is called the Berlusconi government as soon as possible, even before the G8 [summit]."
G8 summits are a delicate issue for Berlusconi. The last one he hosted, in Genoa in 2001, was the scene of violent clashes between police and protesters in which a demonstrator was shot dead. Several dozen police officers were later put on trial in connection with a bloody attack on unarmed protesters.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/29/silvio-berlusconi-g8-summit-allegations
martedì 30 giugno 2009
Berlusconi dubs himself ‘most popular’ leader
By Guy Dinmore in Naples
Published: June 30 2009
Appearing on a billionaire’s luxury ship in the Bay of Naples on Monday, nine days before he hosts a Group of Eight summit, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, rejected reports that his government risked falling apart over his personal life.
“My government is probably the most safe and secure in the west,” he said.
He specifically rejected “foreign” press reports questioning its stability in the wake of allegations by escorts that they had been paid by a businessman to attend parties at the prime minister’s residences and that one had sex with him on the night of the US elections in November.
Mr Berlusconi, 72, cited an unsourced opinion poll as giving him a 62.3 per cent approval rating, making him “the most popular head of government in all the west”.
An Ispo poll published at the weekend gave him a 49.1 per cent approval rating, and suggested that he had lost the support of some women and young people. Journalists were invited to a press conference aboard the Fantasia, Europe’s largest cruise liner, operated by MSC Crociere. Its billionaire owner, Gianluigi Aponte, sat in the front row.
The prime minister thanked him for offering the liner for use by world leaders attending the July 8-10 G8 summit – before Mr Berlusconi decided to move the venue to L’Aquila, a city devastated by an earthquake in April.
Mr Berlusconi spoke about his government’s achievements and plans for the summit, citing in detail the number of electric cars to be used (33), methane-powered minibuses (10) and subsidies for planting trees (€1m, £850,000, $1.4m). The meeting is to be attended by 39 heads of government and international organisations.
Minimising the danger of embarrassing questions over his private life and a judicial investigation into the businessman suspected of procuring prostitutes, the premier took only five brief questions.
As Mr Berlusconi left, a foreign reporter asked him what he had done on the night of the US elections. But the prime minister walked on, smiling. In an interview last week with Chi, a magazine that he owns, Mr Berlusconi said he had no memory of the name or face of 42-year-old Patrizia D’Addario, who said she spent the night with him because she wanted his help in fixing a building permit problem. Ms D’Addario said she felt betrayed because help was promised but did not materialise.
Mr Berlusconi, a billionaire media magnate, also turned on the Italian media, accusing newspapers of deepening the financial crisis by preaching negativity.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/22acb81a-64f6-11de-a13f-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Published: June 30 2009
Appearing on a billionaire’s luxury ship in the Bay of Naples on Monday, nine days before he hosts a Group of Eight summit, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, rejected reports that his government risked falling apart over his personal life.
“My government is probably the most safe and secure in the west,” he said.
He specifically rejected “foreign” press reports questioning its stability in the wake of allegations by escorts that they had been paid by a businessman to attend parties at the prime minister’s residences and that one had sex with him on the night of the US elections in November.
Mr Berlusconi, 72, cited an unsourced opinion poll as giving him a 62.3 per cent approval rating, making him “the most popular head of government in all the west”.
An Ispo poll published at the weekend gave him a 49.1 per cent approval rating, and suggested that he had lost the support of some women and young people. Journalists were invited to a press conference aboard the Fantasia, Europe’s largest cruise liner, operated by MSC Crociere. Its billionaire owner, Gianluigi Aponte, sat in the front row.
The prime minister thanked him for offering the liner for use by world leaders attending the July 8-10 G8 summit – before Mr Berlusconi decided to move the venue to L’Aquila, a city devastated by an earthquake in April.
Mr Berlusconi spoke about his government’s achievements and plans for the summit, citing in detail the number of electric cars to be used (33), methane-powered minibuses (10) and subsidies for planting trees (€1m, £850,000, $1.4m). The meeting is to be attended by 39 heads of government and international organisations.
Minimising the danger of embarrassing questions over his private life and a judicial investigation into the businessman suspected of procuring prostitutes, the premier took only five brief questions.
As Mr Berlusconi left, a foreign reporter asked him what he had done on the night of the US elections. But the prime minister walked on, smiling. In an interview last week with Chi, a magazine that he owns, Mr Berlusconi said he had no memory of the name or face of 42-year-old Patrizia D’Addario, who said she spent the night with him because she wanted his help in fixing a building permit problem. Ms D’Addario said she felt betrayed because help was promised but did not materialise.
Mr Berlusconi, a billionaire media magnate, also turned on the Italian media, accusing newspapers of deepening the financial crisis by preaching negativity.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/22acb81a-64f6-11de-a13f-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Silvio Berlusconi refuses to be diverted by scandal as he plays statesman
Silvio Berlusconi holds his press conference on the Fantasia in Naples harbourFrom The Times June 30, 2009
Richard Owen in Naples
Silvio Berlusconi did yesterday what beleaguered leaders have done down the ages. Facing an onslaught of revelations about his private life, the Italian leader fought back by recasting himself as an international statesman.
With a week to go before he hosts the G8 summit of world leaders, the Prime Minister batted away questions about his connection to young women and instead tried to concentrate on the big issues facing the world today.
In an hour-long press conference Mr Berlusconi, one of the longest-serving Western leaders still in power, said that he was focused on issues of global importance such as climate change and reform of the world financial system — along with Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, on which he said that the question of sanctions against Tehran would be discussed.
The G5 nations — China, Brazil, Mexico, India and South Africa — and Egypt will also attend. The Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who made a controversial visit to Rome this month, will appear at the head of the African Union delegation. Mr Berlusconi rejected allegations in the European press suggesting that his Government was unstable. In fact it was “the most stable in the Western world”. His party had won European and local elections decisively, and his current popularity was 62.3 per cent.
For his domestic audience he even had time for a slide show to demonstrate how he had resolved the Naples rubbish crisis last year.
He was backed by Giulio Tremonti, the Economy Minister, who has been mooted as a possible leader of a caretaker government if Mr Berlusconi falls. Mr Tremonti dismissed such talk, saying that any caretaker government would “last less time than the sell-by date on a pot of yoghurt”.
He said the European and local elections had shown that Mr Berlusconi had a strong majority and that he would govern to the end of his five-year mandate. He also rejected suggestions that Mr Berlusconi had been weakened by the Bari inquiry into alleged payments to women to attend his parties, saying that the prosecutors would do better to investigate the Sacra Corona Unita, the local Mafia.
If his performance was intended to reassure the public and world leaders, it was only partially successful.
Mr Berlusconi’s choice of a cruise ship, the Fantasia, moored in Naples harbour, was an odd location to stage his comeback. The ship, the pride of the MSC cruise line based in Genoa, would have been used to house G8 delegates had it been held at La Maddalena, the former naval base in Sardinia, as originally planned.
Instead, the location has been changed to the L’Aquila finance police barracks in Abruzzo, which has been the nerve centre of the post-earthquake reconstruction in central Italy.
La Maddelena was being modernised and revamped as the summit venue when Mr Berlusconi decided abruptly to move the meeting to L’Aquila after the April 6 earthquake as a gesture of solidarity with the victims.
President Napolitano called yesterday for a “truce” in the media on “controversies” in the run-up to the G8 summit. Despite Mr Berlusconi’s best efforts, however, the scandal surrounding his relations with young women refuses to die.
Manila Gorio, the transsexual talent scout, whose local television show in Bari has featured many of the showgirls who attended Mr Berlusconi’s parties in Rome and Sardinia, confirmed that Patrizia D’Addario, the escort who claimed to have spent US election night with Mr Berlusconi in November, had secretly made audio and video recordings, now with the police.
“We are like sisters,” Ms Gorio told La Stampa. “We know each other’s secrets.”
She said that Ms D’Addario had slept with Mr Berlusconi to put pressure on him — unsuccessfully — to help her to get planning permission for a bed and breakfast hotel.
With a week to go before he hosts the G8 summit of world leaders, the Prime Minister batted away questions about his connection to young women and instead tried to concentrate on the big issues facing the world today.
In an hour-long press conference Mr Berlusconi, one of the longest-serving Western leaders still in power, said that he was focused on issues of global importance such as climate change and reform of the world financial system — along with Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, on which he said that the question of sanctions against Tehran would be discussed.
The G5 nations — China, Brazil, Mexico, India and South Africa — and Egypt will also attend. The Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who made a controversial visit to Rome this month, will appear at the head of the African Union delegation. Mr Berlusconi rejected allegations in the European press suggesting that his Government was unstable. In fact it was “the most stable in the Western world”. His party had won European and local elections decisively, and his current popularity was 62.3 per cent.
For his domestic audience he even had time for a slide show to demonstrate how he had resolved the Naples rubbish crisis last year.
He was backed by Giulio Tremonti, the Economy Minister, who has been mooted as a possible leader of a caretaker government if Mr Berlusconi falls. Mr Tremonti dismissed such talk, saying that any caretaker government would “last less time than the sell-by date on a pot of yoghurt”.
He said the European and local elections had shown that Mr Berlusconi had a strong majority and that he would govern to the end of his five-year mandate. He also rejected suggestions that Mr Berlusconi had been weakened by the Bari inquiry into alleged payments to women to attend his parties, saying that the prosecutors would do better to investigate the Sacra Corona Unita, the local Mafia.
If his performance was intended to reassure the public and world leaders, it was only partially successful.
Mr Berlusconi’s choice of a cruise ship, the Fantasia, moored in Naples harbour, was an odd location to stage his comeback. The ship, the pride of the MSC cruise line based in Genoa, would have been used to house G8 delegates had it been held at La Maddalena, the former naval base in Sardinia, as originally planned.
Instead, the location has been changed to the L’Aquila finance police barracks in Abruzzo, which has been the nerve centre of the post-earthquake reconstruction in central Italy.
La Maddelena was being modernised and revamped as the summit venue when Mr Berlusconi decided abruptly to move the meeting to L’Aquila after the April 6 earthquake as a gesture of solidarity with the victims.
President Napolitano called yesterday for a “truce” in the media on “controversies” in the run-up to the G8 summit. Despite Mr Berlusconi’s best efforts, however, the scandal surrounding his relations with young women refuses to die.
Manila Gorio, the transsexual talent scout, whose local television show in Bari has featured many of the showgirls who attended Mr Berlusconi’s parties in Rome and Sardinia, confirmed that Patrizia D’Addario, the escort who claimed to have spent US election night with Mr Berlusconi in November, had secretly made audio and video recordings, now with the police.
“We are like sisters,” Ms Gorio told La Stampa. “We know each other’s secrets.”
She said that Ms D’Addario had slept with Mr Berlusconi to put pressure on him — unsuccessfully — to help her to get planning permission for a bed and breakfast hotel.
domenica 28 giugno 2009
Las peligrosas amistades de Papi
Silvio Berlusconi, durante una entrevista concedida a la cadena de televisión estatal RAI a principios de junio
El anfitrión de la cumbre del G-8 en Italia trata de desdramatizar unas acusaciones que habrían forzado a dimitir a muchos políticos
Una colegiala de Nápoles a la que cortejó cuando era menor de edad (Noemi Letizia); un empresario trepa de Bari que acarrea chicas y cocaína a las fiestas VIP (Gianpaolo Tarantini); una prostituta cuarentona que trabaja siempre armada de grabadora (Patrizia d'Addario); una velina de 23 años que dice trabajar como chica imagen (Barbara Montereale), ambas convertidas en candidatas por la lista electoral La Puglia Antes que Nada tras pasar un par de noches en su casa; un chico para todo llamado Alessandro Mannarini que graba las fiestas con el móvil, y un abogado personal (Niccolò Ghedini) que trata de disculpar a su poderoso cliente diciendo que él solo era el "usuario final" (de las prostitutas). Ésta es, a grandes rasgos, la lista de amistades peligrosas con las que el primer ministro italiano ha pasado sus ratos de ocio en los últimos meses.
Dentro de sólo 12 días, el magnate y genial transformista milanés olvidará a este elenco sureño para recibir a 27 líderes y jefes de Gobierno en la cumbre del G8 que debe sentar las nuevas bases que regularán una economía global inmersa en la recesión más profunda desde 1929.
Así anda Berluscolandia. El PIB caerá este año el 5,5%, el déficit público galopa hacia el 5%, la deuda pública anda disparada, la renta per cápita sigue por debajo de la española pero casi nadie habla de eso. Y si habla, Berlusconi le dice que "se calle la boca".
"Hay que consumir y callar la boca a los catastrofistas, los organismos internacionales deben dejar de publicar datos negativos que producen pánico. La crisis es sólo psicológica", afirmó el viernes el primer ministro.
Sin duda tiene razón. Hablar de esas cosas no hace más que daño. La gente quiere vivir tranquila, ver la televisión, evadirse de la realidad, hablar de las velinas [azafatas televisivas], de todo ese ejército de chicas dispuestas a dejarse acariciar por un sultán de 73 años a cambio de una prueba en Mediaset o la RAI.
Emilio Fede, amigo del alma, compañero de juergas sardas y milanesas del primer ministro y presentador del Telediario del Canal 4, de su propiedad, ha declarado esta semana al Corriere della Sera que por la oficina de personal en Mediaset han pasado en estos años 47.000 personas (velinas y velinos) para hacer castings.
Así anda Berluscolandia. El PIB caerá este año el 5,5%, el déficit público galopa hacia el 5%, la deuda pública anda disparada, la renta per cápita sigue por debajo de la española pero casi nadie habla de eso. Y si habla, Berlusconi le dice que "se calle la boca".
"Hay que consumir y callar la boca a los catastrofistas, los organismos internacionales deben dejar de publicar datos negativos que producen pánico. La crisis es sólo psicológica", afirmó el viernes el primer ministro.
Sin duda tiene razón. Hablar de esas cosas no hace más que daño. La gente quiere vivir tranquila, ver la televisión, evadirse de la realidad, hablar de las velinas [azafatas televisivas], de todo ese ejército de chicas dispuestas a dejarse acariciar por un sultán de 73 años a cambio de una prueba en Mediaset o la RAI.
Emilio Fede, amigo del alma, compañero de juergas sardas y milanesas del primer ministro y presentador del Telediario del Canal 4, de su propiedad, ha declarado esta semana al Corriere della Sera que por la oficina de personal en Mediaset han pasado en estos años 47.000 personas (velinas y velinos) para hacer castings.
Se ha escrito que Italia era ya así hace 50 años, cuando Anna Magnani en Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951) se sometía a todo tipo de humillaciones para buscarle un papel a su hija en el cine. Se ha recordado que, desde Roma y antes, el poder siempre se ha servido de enanos, jovencitas y cantantes para olvidar las tensiones de la gobernación. El crítico de arte y filósofo Vittorio Sgarbi, incluso, ha escrito estos días: "Berlusconi se folla a todas esas chicas en nombre de todos los italianos, y estos se lo deben de agradecer porque para gobernar bien hay que follar bien".
Lo que parece cierto es que en un país más o menos normal, esta historia de sexo, poder, machismo, dominación, narcisismo compulsivo y eterna juventud habría terminado ya hace varias semanas con una moción de censura, una dimisión o quizá un discreto exilio en un avión privado. Nada de eso ha pasado; al contrario, muchos italianos parecen tolerar las aventuras del emperador con una compostura y una desenvoltura admirables.
El propio Papi lo ha señalado estos días, no se sabe si en pleno delirio megalómano o respondiendo al prudente cardenal que le reclamaba coherencia: "No pienso cambiar y no me arrepiento de nada. Soy un matador, un conquistador. Quizá algunos invitados fueron equivocados, y ellos se equivocaron con otros invitados. Pero yo soy así y los italianos me quieren así. Tengo el 61% de apoyos. Sienten que soy bueno, sincero, generoso, leal, y que mantengo las promesas".
Un hombre de honor, pues. Quizá se refería a eso. O quizá cuando uno no puede o no debe decir la verdad, bromear es la única salida posible. "No hay un modo más positivo de reaccionar a las calumnias", explica el sultán. Así que ve a unos obreros en una obra en L'Aquila, la sede del próximo G8, se acerca y les espeta: "Veo que somos muchos tíos aquí, ya traigo yo las velinas y las menores".
Hay formas y formas de afrontar este asunto que apasiona a los periódicos aunque las televisiones sumisas al primer ministro (seis de siete canales) tratan de esconderlo a toda costa. Y es que la autocrítica y la derrota no van con Berlusconi. Y rendirse y dimitir son verbos que en Italia se conjugan poco.
En su caso, además, renunciar al cargo es perder su tesoro más preciado: la inmunidad que le da el Laudo Alfano, la ley que impide procesar a las cuatro altas instancias del Estado. Y ya se sabe cómo son los jueces. El 19 de junio, mientras todos hablaban de las amigas de Berlusconi, su compañero del alma, Marcello Dell'Utri, acudía a la tercera audiencia del juicio en apelación en el que se defiende de haber fundado Forza Italia en coordinación con la mafia siciliana.
Dell'Utri fue condenado a nueve años de cárcel en 2004 por asociación mafiosa externa. La sentencia afirmó: "Está probado que Dell'Utri prometió a la mafia ventajas precisas en el campo político y, a cambio, está probado que la mafia, en ejecución de esa promesa, se comprometió a votar por Forza Italia en la primera confrontación electoral, y después".
Quizá por eso, desdramatizar es la consigna del momento en Berluscolandia. Y un buen asunto de faldas -si se olvida el pequeño detalle de las menores de edad- tiene desde luego mejor venta que un asunto de mafia. "Sí, va bene, se tirará todo lo que se mueve, pero es su vida privada, qué rayos os importa eso a vosotros, os habéis convertido en un periódico de cotilleo", decía la otra noche en una fiesta romana un veterano ex piloto de Alitalia.
Lo que no se ve no existe. Lo malo es que muchos italianos han visto ya algunas cosas, sin duda menos que los españoles o los británicos y seguramente mucho menos fuertes de lo que pueden llegar a ver. Pero si todo es psicológico, como lo es su adicción a las mujeres jóvenes, cada vez más mujeres y cada vez más jóvenes, la pregunta es: ¿por qué los italianos no reaccionan?
Una posible razón es que sigue sin haber oposición. El congreso del PD se celebrará el 11 de octubre, y de momento los reformistas están en construcción, sin líder y sin rumbo: mal momento para ir a elecciones anticipadas.
Otro motivo es que siendo el Pueblo de la Libertad, como dice Giovanni Sartori, un "gran pesebre en el que todos meriendan gracias al amo", el disenso interno es incipiente, pero todavía mínimo. Si tenemos al carismático y cantarín condottiere y no hay una alternativa de poder, quizá sea mejor hacer como que no pasa nada y aguantar el tirón. La agonía podría ser larga.
No será fácil aunque la sociedad italiana parece realmente dormida, ajena al estupor que agita a las cancillerías. El estruendoso silencio de los intelectuales en un país que fue vanguardia cultural de occidente se explica, según el sacerdote Filippo di Giacomo, porque "los que no cobran de Mondadori o Mediaset [empresas de Berlusconi] están intoxicados de dinero, de vanidad y de escepticismo". La ausencia de respuesta de la jerarquía del clero a la emergencia moral escandaliza más a los propios católicos y a los extranjeros que a muchos italianos, tan elásticos como sus obispos.
Y luego está la incomprensible parálisis de las mujeres, a quienes la actriz y activista italiana de origen somalí Shukri Said imagina "quitando hierro a la vicenda de papi y envidiando a las velinas bajo las lámparas de rayos uva".
En Salò o los 120 días de Sodoma, la última película de Pasolini, recuerda Said, "éste narró con toda crudeza cómo el poder se distancia de la humanidad transformándola en objeto, cómo el sexo tiene un papel metafórico terrible en esa mutación. Pasolini denunció la mercantilización de los cuerpos como metáfora de la esencia íntima del poder en la sociedad del consumismo capitalista (el usuario final, el consumidor final). Violencia, humillación, total convicción de impunidad. Ahora está pasando en la realidad".
No todas callan, sin embargo. Un reducido grupo de profesoras universitarias ha lanzado esta semana a través de la revista MicroMega un manifiesto llamando a las primeras damas del G8 a no acudir con sus maridos a Italia en señal de protesta por el trato indigno que Berlusconi da a las mujeres en "la esfera privada y pública". De momento la iniciativa ha tenido su eco, y ayer había recogido 8.500 firmas, entre ellas las de prestigiosas científicas e intelectuales. La primera dama mundial, Michelle Obama, ha echado un jarro de agua fría a la iniciativa al anunciar que vendrá, y además con sus dos hijas: la familia Obama tiene audiencia privada con el Papa en el Vaticano el 10 de julio, al término del G-8.
La mórbida respuesta de las antes combativas y hoy aletargadas donne italiane refleja la desmoralización y el decaimiento general. Convertidas en objeto de iniquidad por el usuario final, muchas mujeres callan y otorgan. "Si las mammas no solo no reaccionan sino que colaboran con este estado de cosas, ¿quién salvará a Italia?", se pregunta Said.
La historia empezó con el cursillo político organizado por Berlusconi en la sede del PDL para las velinas ante las elecciones europeas. Siguió con el Noemigate, que reveló que Berlusconi cortejó e invitó a un par de fiestas y a pasar el fin de año en su casa sarda a una joven de 17 años (con una amiga, Roberta O., de su misma edad, de la que por cierto nadie sabe nada desde entonces).
Pasando por los vuelos de Estado en los que viajaban cantantes, bailarinas de flamenco y prostitutas, llegaron las visitas de la meretriz Patrizia D'Addario y la chica imagen Barbara Montereale al harén de Palazzo Grazioli.
Dos meses después, aunque pocos italianos lo digan en público, es indudable que el Papigate está teniendo su coste. Desde entonces, Berlusconi ha mentido numerosas veces. Y algo ha empezado a cambiar. El otro día, una conexión en directo de un telediario de la RAI fue perturbada por un grupo de estudiantes que gritaba: "Berlusconi pedófilo". Pertenecían a Comunión y Liberación.
Berlusconi ha tratado de invocar cifras y sondeos para certificar el apoyo de los italianos. Pero resultan completamente irreales. Es cierto que ha vencido las elecciones europeas con el 35% de los votos, y que ha ganado a la izquierda mucho terreno en las locales. Pero la realidad está muy lejos del 72% de popularidad que se otorgaba a sí mismo -sin enseñar el sondeo- hace unas semanas. Y el viernes, él mismo rebajó ese apoyo al 61%, también sin pruebas: 11 puntos menos en dos semanas. Hay más: las europeas muestran que de cada 100 electores un tercio no votó. De ese 66% de electores, Berlusconi obtuvo el 35% de los votos. Si a eso le restamos al menos un 5% de votantes de la vieja AN que votan PDL pero no le tragan, el resultado es que de cada 100 italianos mayores de edad, Berlusconi recoge sólo un 20% de apoyos. Uno de cada cinco. ¿Será el indicio de que el final se acerca?
Lo que parece cierto es que en un país más o menos normal, esta historia de sexo, poder, machismo, dominación, narcisismo compulsivo y eterna juventud habría terminado ya hace varias semanas con una moción de censura, una dimisión o quizá un discreto exilio en un avión privado. Nada de eso ha pasado; al contrario, muchos italianos parecen tolerar las aventuras del emperador con una compostura y una desenvoltura admirables.
El propio Papi lo ha señalado estos días, no se sabe si en pleno delirio megalómano o respondiendo al prudente cardenal que le reclamaba coherencia: "No pienso cambiar y no me arrepiento de nada. Soy un matador, un conquistador. Quizá algunos invitados fueron equivocados, y ellos se equivocaron con otros invitados. Pero yo soy así y los italianos me quieren así. Tengo el 61% de apoyos. Sienten que soy bueno, sincero, generoso, leal, y que mantengo las promesas".
Un hombre de honor, pues. Quizá se refería a eso. O quizá cuando uno no puede o no debe decir la verdad, bromear es la única salida posible. "No hay un modo más positivo de reaccionar a las calumnias", explica el sultán. Así que ve a unos obreros en una obra en L'Aquila, la sede del próximo G8, se acerca y les espeta: "Veo que somos muchos tíos aquí, ya traigo yo las velinas y las menores".
Hay formas y formas de afrontar este asunto que apasiona a los periódicos aunque las televisiones sumisas al primer ministro (seis de siete canales) tratan de esconderlo a toda costa. Y es que la autocrítica y la derrota no van con Berlusconi. Y rendirse y dimitir son verbos que en Italia se conjugan poco.
En su caso, además, renunciar al cargo es perder su tesoro más preciado: la inmunidad que le da el Laudo Alfano, la ley que impide procesar a las cuatro altas instancias del Estado. Y ya se sabe cómo son los jueces. El 19 de junio, mientras todos hablaban de las amigas de Berlusconi, su compañero del alma, Marcello Dell'Utri, acudía a la tercera audiencia del juicio en apelación en el que se defiende de haber fundado Forza Italia en coordinación con la mafia siciliana.
Dell'Utri fue condenado a nueve años de cárcel en 2004 por asociación mafiosa externa. La sentencia afirmó: "Está probado que Dell'Utri prometió a la mafia ventajas precisas en el campo político y, a cambio, está probado que la mafia, en ejecución de esa promesa, se comprometió a votar por Forza Italia en la primera confrontación electoral, y después".
Quizá por eso, desdramatizar es la consigna del momento en Berluscolandia. Y un buen asunto de faldas -si se olvida el pequeño detalle de las menores de edad- tiene desde luego mejor venta que un asunto de mafia. "Sí, va bene, se tirará todo lo que se mueve, pero es su vida privada, qué rayos os importa eso a vosotros, os habéis convertido en un periódico de cotilleo", decía la otra noche en una fiesta romana un veterano ex piloto de Alitalia.
Lo que no se ve no existe. Lo malo es que muchos italianos han visto ya algunas cosas, sin duda menos que los españoles o los británicos y seguramente mucho menos fuertes de lo que pueden llegar a ver. Pero si todo es psicológico, como lo es su adicción a las mujeres jóvenes, cada vez más mujeres y cada vez más jóvenes, la pregunta es: ¿por qué los italianos no reaccionan?
Una posible razón es que sigue sin haber oposición. El congreso del PD se celebrará el 11 de octubre, y de momento los reformistas están en construcción, sin líder y sin rumbo: mal momento para ir a elecciones anticipadas.
Otro motivo es que siendo el Pueblo de la Libertad, como dice Giovanni Sartori, un "gran pesebre en el que todos meriendan gracias al amo", el disenso interno es incipiente, pero todavía mínimo. Si tenemos al carismático y cantarín condottiere y no hay una alternativa de poder, quizá sea mejor hacer como que no pasa nada y aguantar el tirón. La agonía podría ser larga.
No será fácil aunque la sociedad italiana parece realmente dormida, ajena al estupor que agita a las cancillerías. El estruendoso silencio de los intelectuales en un país que fue vanguardia cultural de occidente se explica, según el sacerdote Filippo di Giacomo, porque "los que no cobran de Mondadori o Mediaset [empresas de Berlusconi] están intoxicados de dinero, de vanidad y de escepticismo". La ausencia de respuesta de la jerarquía del clero a la emergencia moral escandaliza más a los propios católicos y a los extranjeros que a muchos italianos, tan elásticos como sus obispos.
Y luego está la incomprensible parálisis de las mujeres, a quienes la actriz y activista italiana de origen somalí Shukri Said imagina "quitando hierro a la vicenda de papi y envidiando a las velinas bajo las lámparas de rayos uva".
En Salò o los 120 días de Sodoma, la última película de Pasolini, recuerda Said, "éste narró con toda crudeza cómo el poder se distancia de la humanidad transformándola en objeto, cómo el sexo tiene un papel metafórico terrible en esa mutación. Pasolini denunció la mercantilización de los cuerpos como metáfora de la esencia íntima del poder en la sociedad del consumismo capitalista (el usuario final, el consumidor final). Violencia, humillación, total convicción de impunidad. Ahora está pasando en la realidad".
No todas callan, sin embargo. Un reducido grupo de profesoras universitarias ha lanzado esta semana a través de la revista MicroMega un manifiesto llamando a las primeras damas del G8 a no acudir con sus maridos a Italia en señal de protesta por el trato indigno que Berlusconi da a las mujeres en "la esfera privada y pública". De momento la iniciativa ha tenido su eco, y ayer había recogido 8.500 firmas, entre ellas las de prestigiosas científicas e intelectuales. La primera dama mundial, Michelle Obama, ha echado un jarro de agua fría a la iniciativa al anunciar que vendrá, y además con sus dos hijas: la familia Obama tiene audiencia privada con el Papa en el Vaticano el 10 de julio, al término del G-8.
La mórbida respuesta de las antes combativas y hoy aletargadas donne italiane refleja la desmoralización y el decaimiento general. Convertidas en objeto de iniquidad por el usuario final, muchas mujeres callan y otorgan. "Si las mammas no solo no reaccionan sino que colaboran con este estado de cosas, ¿quién salvará a Italia?", se pregunta Said.
La historia empezó con el cursillo político organizado por Berlusconi en la sede del PDL para las velinas ante las elecciones europeas. Siguió con el Noemigate, que reveló que Berlusconi cortejó e invitó a un par de fiestas y a pasar el fin de año en su casa sarda a una joven de 17 años (con una amiga, Roberta O., de su misma edad, de la que por cierto nadie sabe nada desde entonces).
Pasando por los vuelos de Estado en los que viajaban cantantes, bailarinas de flamenco y prostitutas, llegaron las visitas de la meretriz Patrizia D'Addario y la chica imagen Barbara Montereale al harén de Palazzo Grazioli.
Dos meses después, aunque pocos italianos lo digan en público, es indudable que el Papigate está teniendo su coste. Desde entonces, Berlusconi ha mentido numerosas veces. Y algo ha empezado a cambiar. El otro día, una conexión en directo de un telediario de la RAI fue perturbada por un grupo de estudiantes que gritaba: "Berlusconi pedófilo". Pertenecían a Comunión y Liberación.
Berlusconi ha tratado de invocar cifras y sondeos para certificar el apoyo de los italianos. Pero resultan completamente irreales. Es cierto que ha vencido las elecciones europeas con el 35% de los votos, y que ha ganado a la izquierda mucho terreno en las locales. Pero la realidad está muy lejos del 72% de popularidad que se otorgaba a sí mismo -sin enseñar el sondeo- hace unas semanas. Y el viernes, él mismo rebajó ese apoyo al 61%, también sin pruebas: 11 puntos menos en dos semanas. Hay más: las europeas muestran que de cada 100 electores un tercio no votó. De ese 66% de electores, Berlusconi obtuvo el 35% de los votos. Si a eso le restamos al menos un 5% de votantes de la vieja AN que votan PDL pero no le tragan, el resultado es que de cada 100 italianos mayores de edad, Berlusconi recoge sólo un 20% de apoyos. Uno de cada cinco. ¿Será el indicio de que el final se acerca?
MIGUEL MORA - Roma - 28/06/2009
Sarah Sands: Will old goat be on the menu at Berlusconi's summit?
Sunday, 28 June 2009
A petition by Italian women academics that calls on wives of G8 leaders to boycott the forthcoming summit in Italy as a protest against the behaviour of President Berlusconi is gaining signatures. The main topic on the agenda of the L'Aquila summit in July is the stabilisation of Afghanistan, but the chief subject of conversation is likely to be the heroically/disgracefully goatish behaviour of Silvio Berlusconi.
Just as President Obama ushered in a dawn of subtle, complex, individualistic world citizens, so President Berlusconi has his own counter-cultural musical hall line-up of busty women in bikinis, hypocritical bishops and goose-stepping Germans.
He is not the only European leader who behaves differently to the model we expect in this country. An Australian politician I met the other day had been puzzled by a reception he attended at the Elysée Palace. It had been an occasion for global politicians of the centre-right to discuss political principles. President Sarkozy greeted his guests and then disappeared from the room. The politicians eagerly awaited his return so that discussions could begin. After an hour or so they became restless. My Australian acquaintance helped himself to a drink and looked at the view from the window onto the courtyard. To his astonishment, he recognised Sarkozy, in a tracksuit, jogging round the edge. The guests concluded that the explanation for such bizarre behaviour must be that Sarkozy was French.
President Sarkozy is married to a chic woman who records pretentious songs. He is clever, charming, vain, and tried to marginalise the British over D-Day. Because he is French. Similarly, if any politician is going to get away with a cabinet of chorus girls, he will probably be Italian. Remember, Emperor Nero was quite popular with his people. In a country famous for its pornographic television, for its indifference towards the political process and for a historically lax view of rape, Berlusconi is not a freak.
Perhaps each nation gets the scandal it deserves. As a nation of shopkeepers, our greatest political earthquake centres on MPs' supermarket receipts and income tax arrangements. It makes our hearts beat faster.
Yet national stereotypes do not wholly explain why some politicians brush off scandal and others are sunk by it. Even if you share the view of those envious male bloggers who explain that "Berlusconi represents hope for all men that they will still be f*****g in their seventies", you might also acknowledge that he lacks a little dignity.
Some claim that Berlusconi is forgiven his Hugh Hefner-style indulgences because he is so very disciplined about immigration. But policies are not the key to everything. President Obama is often criticised for his policies, but remains worshipped for his charismatic cool.
The fact is that popularity is so fickle that it is indefinable. Gordon Brown cannot understand the changes in the public mood. He was loved for being gloomy and sleepless in a crisis and now he is despised for it. No wonder his election strategy is to hang on and hope for a change of wind. Look how it blew Peter Mandelson into something close to public affection.
President Berlusconi has a 60 per cent popularity rating not because the Viagra generation have voted with their feet, or because Italy is essentially a land of unclothed women and priapic men. His appeal is intangible. That is what makes it so galling for British politicians. There are no lessons to be learned.
Sarah Sands is deputy editor of the 'London Evening Standard'
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sarah-sands/sarah-sands-will-old-goat-be-on-the-menu-at-berlusconis-summit-1722251.html
A petition by Italian women academics that calls on wives of G8 leaders to boycott the forthcoming summit in Italy as a protest against the behaviour of President Berlusconi is gaining signatures. The main topic on the agenda of the L'Aquila summit in July is the stabilisation of Afghanistan, but the chief subject of conversation is likely to be the heroically/disgracefully goatish behaviour of Silvio Berlusconi.
Just as President Obama ushered in a dawn of subtle, complex, individualistic world citizens, so President Berlusconi has his own counter-cultural musical hall line-up of busty women in bikinis, hypocritical bishops and goose-stepping Germans.
He is not the only European leader who behaves differently to the model we expect in this country. An Australian politician I met the other day had been puzzled by a reception he attended at the Elysée Palace. It had been an occasion for global politicians of the centre-right to discuss political principles. President Sarkozy greeted his guests and then disappeared from the room. The politicians eagerly awaited his return so that discussions could begin. After an hour or so they became restless. My Australian acquaintance helped himself to a drink and looked at the view from the window onto the courtyard. To his astonishment, he recognised Sarkozy, in a tracksuit, jogging round the edge. The guests concluded that the explanation for such bizarre behaviour must be that Sarkozy was French.
President Sarkozy is married to a chic woman who records pretentious songs. He is clever, charming, vain, and tried to marginalise the British over D-Day. Because he is French. Similarly, if any politician is going to get away with a cabinet of chorus girls, he will probably be Italian. Remember, Emperor Nero was quite popular with his people. In a country famous for its pornographic television, for its indifference towards the political process and for a historically lax view of rape, Berlusconi is not a freak.
Perhaps each nation gets the scandal it deserves. As a nation of shopkeepers, our greatest political earthquake centres on MPs' supermarket receipts and income tax arrangements. It makes our hearts beat faster.
Yet national stereotypes do not wholly explain why some politicians brush off scandal and others are sunk by it. Even if you share the view of those envious male bloggers who explain that "Berlusconi represents hope for all men that they will still be f*****g in their seventies", you might also acknowledge that he lacks a little dignity.
Some claim that Berlusconi is forgiven his Hugh Hefner-style indulgences because he is so very disciplined about immigration. But policies are not the key to everything. President Obama is often criticised for his policies, but remains worshipped for his charismatic cool.
The fact is that popularity is so fickle that it is indefinable. Gordon Brown cannot understand the changes in the public mood. He was loved for being gloomy and sleepless in a crisis and now he is despised for it. No wonder his election strategy is to hang on and hope for a change of wind. Look how it blew Peter Mandelson into something close to public affection.
President Berlusconi has a 60 per cent popularity rating not because the Viagra generation have voted with their feet, or because Italy is essentially a land of unclothed women and priapic men. His appeal is intangible. That is what makes it so galling for British politicians. There are no lessons to be learned.
Sarah Sands is deputy editor of the 'London Evening Standard'
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sarah-sands/sarah-sands-will-old-goat-be-on-the-menu-at-berlusconis-summit-1722251.html
Silvio Berlusconi: how does he do it?
Oh, Silvio!: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gestures in front of an image reading: 'I don't give up' With every breaking scandal, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi wins over more of his countrymen's hearts and votes.
By Tobias Jones Published: 11:31 PM BST 27 Jun 2009
To most of us it seems extraordinary that Silvio Berlusconi is still prime minister of Italy. There can't be many politicians who could survive the sort of scandals he's been through: accusations of perjury, perverting the course of justice, proximity to the Mafia, accusations of membership of a sinister masonic lodge, of tax evasion and of corrupting public officials. And now, on top of all that, it has been discovered that he's been enjoying Dionysian parties with dozens of young girls at both of his Sardinian and Roman villas.
This time he doesn't even deny the central allegations. Not surprisingly, perhaps, since there's overwhelming evidence of what went on: there are photographs of topless girls in G-strings lounging around his villa, there are wiretaps of businessmen lining up escort girls for Silvio's parties. One escort has revealed she was given only half her "appearance fee" because she didn't stay the night (she didn't make that mistake again). The question isn't did he or didn't he, but simply: how on earth does he get away with it? How is it that a country we think of as a close neighbour, which we all think we know so well, has such a different morality to ours?
This time he doesn't even deny the central allegations. Not surprisingly, perhaps, since there's overwhelming evidence of what went on: there are photographs of topless girls in G-strings lounging around his villa, there are wiretaps of businessmen lining up escort girls for Silvio's parties. One escort has revealed she was given only half her "appearance fee" because she didn't stay the night (she didn't make that mistake again). The question isn't did he or didn't he, but simply: how on earth does he get away with it? How is it that a country we think of as a close neighbour, which we all think we know so well, has such a different morality to ours?
The answer lies largely in the fact that Italians suffer from scandal-fatigue. Ever since the First Republic was swept away under a tsunami of corruption allegations in the early Nineties, the country has been awash with scandal. It's as if there's no normality left against which to judge wrongdoing.
Open any Italian newspaper and you're likely to see pages and pages of breathtaking allegations and furious denials. On any day you choose you'll be able to read the leaked details of an ongoing investigation, astonishing wiretap intercepts and interviews with "key witnesses". It might be about the implosion of Parmalat, the dairy company, or about Luciano Moggi's machinations with Serie A referees, or about the murky security sector within Telecom Italia. There are so many scandals that public discourse is often little more than mud-slinging, and after a while people don't notice the real dirt anymore. As my Venetian uncle-in-law memorably told me years ago: "It's not that mud doesn't stick; it's that there's so much of it that it doesn't matter if it does."
There's also the fact that some Italians have a slightly different attitude towards fidelity. It may be because Catholicism is so voluptuous and forgiving compared with our austere puritanism; or else because the women, and men, seem so irresistibly attractive; or maybe it's because so many television shows have men of retirement age surrounded by showgirls in bikinis ... Whatever the reason, there's little outrage about an old, married man flirting with teenage wenches.
If anything there's envy of, and admiration for, his harem. It's telling that Berlusconi's line of defence last week wasn't Bill Clinton's outright denial: "I did not have sex with that woman." Instead, using a defence that would only work in a country where the male conqueror is more admired than the faithful husband, he simply said he hadn't paid for the sex because that would detract from the thrill of the conquest.
If anything, Berlusconi's libidinous exploits appear to enable the electorate to identify with him more closely. They make him appear a man of the people. Before Berlusconi's entry into Italian politics, the country's parliament was largely dominated by elderly grey men who were measured and refined, but also distant, aloof and superior. Berlusconi, by contrast, has always presented himself as a uomo qualunque, an Ordinary Joe. People seem to admire him for his refusal to watch his step, for the fact that he can never be anything other than a bull in a china shop. We foreigners find his show-boating and back-slapping and gestures and jokes rather cringey, but in Italy they all make him seem somehow normal, part not of a snooty elite but of the people, part of the sacred popolo. He is, says the propaganda, a man just like you, a simple man who loves money and sex.
The difference is, of course, that he has a lot more of both. But even the fact that he's a billionaire doesn't seem to alienate the voters. Paradoxically, many people believe that his vast wealth means that he can't be bought or corrupted. Indeed, whenever he's been accused of corruption, the accusation hasn't been that he's had his fingers in the till but precisely the opposite, that he was buying people rather than being bought. It's a subtle difference and it enables him to present himself as a man making financial sacrifices for the good of the country. You might not believe it, and I certainly don't, but millions of voting Italians clearly do.
And even if they didn't, there's the vexed question of whom else they would vote for. With Berlusconi you know, for better or for worse, what you're getting. If you vote for the Left, you've no idea what or whom you'll end up with. In the 10 years since I first moved to Italy, the Left has been led by, off the top of my head, Prodi, D'Alema, Amato, Rutelli, Fassino, Prodi again, Veltroni, Franceschini … and now they're about to start the electoral process for a new leader. There's something about the Left that is still reminiscent of the old-fashioned trasformismo, of the musical chairs of politics where everyone swaps places but no chair is ever taken away. It's the same merry-go-round of familiar faces, most of them decent enough but shockingly dull and very uninspiring. Next to Berlusconi, they seem short of red blood cells, short of chutzpah and charisma and cunning.
And it's cunning, of course, for which Berlusconi is truly admired. Being furbo – cunning or sly – isn't a slur in Italy; it's a sign that you can outsmart the rest, that you're clever enough to get away with it. Every time Berlusconi survives a scandal, his stock rises yet higher because people are in awe of how he does it. He's like Houdini, calmly shrugging off the shackles that magistrates and journalists and opposition politicians keep trying to put him in.
That admiration for his escapism suggests there's something about the moral geography in Italy that is simply different to our own. It's summed up in one of the adjectives most often applied to Berlusconi: spregiudicato. It's one of those words that is almost impossible to translate because it seems to have two contradictory meanings: both unconventional and unscrupulous. It implies someone who's without prejudice, a person who thinks for himself, a daring maverick. But it also means someone who disregards the rules, someone who rides roughshod over manners and etiquette and the accepted way of doing things. It sounds more of a criticism put like that, but in Italy the word is usually a compliment, especially when applied to the prime minister.
Funnily enough, that moral chasm between Italy and the rest of the world also helps Berlusconi maintain his grip on power. The more he's criticised abroad (and, let's be fair, barely a day goes by without some foreign publication putting the boot into the Italian electorate and their chosen leader), the more he plays the patriotic card. While the opposition quotes eagerly from the "authoritative" publication, Berlusconi accuses them of betrayal and portrays himself – another role with which so many identify – as the down-trodden victim, the hard-done-by Italian of old whom all foreigners love to hate. A lot of Italians are fed up of finger-wagging moralists from northern Europe telling them whom they should elect and, I suspect, vote Berlusconi almost as a declaration of independence. After centuries of being ruled by foreign powers – the papal states, the Habsburgs, the Bourbons and so on – they're determined that foreigners should keep out of their affairs. Especially the many affairs of their Prime Minister.
Open any Italian newspaper and you're likely to see pages and pages of breathtaking allegations and furious denials. On any day you choose you'll be able to read the leaked details of an ongoing investigation, astonishing wiretap intercepts and interviews with "key witnesses". It might be about the implosion of Parmalat, the dairy company, or about Luciano Moggi's machinations with Serie A referees, or about the murky security sector within Telecom Italia. There are so many scandals that public discourse is often little more than mud-slinging, and after a while people don't notice the real dirt anymore. As my Venetian uncle-in-law memorably told me years ago: "It's not that mud doesn't stick; it's that there's so much of it that it doesn't matter if it does."
There's also the fact that some Italians have a slightly different attitude towards fidelity. It may be because Catholicism is so voluptuous and forgiving compared with our austere puritanism; or else because the women, and men, seem so irresistibly attractive; or maybe it's because so many television shows have men of retirement age surrounded by showgirls in bikinis ... Whatever the reason, there's little outrage about an old, married man flirting with teenage wenches.
If anything there's envy of, and admiration for, his harem. It's telling that Berlusconi's line of defence last week wasn't Bill Clinton's outright denial: "I did not have sex with that woman." Instead, using a defence that would only work in a country where the male conqueror is more admired than the faithful husband, he simply said he hadn't paid for the sex because that would detract from the thrill of the conquest.
If anything, Berlusconi's libidinous exploits appear to enable the electorate to identify with him more closely. They make him appear a man of the people. Before Berlusconi's entry into Italian politics, the country's parliament was largely dominated by elderly grey men who were measured and refined, but also distant, aloof and superior. Berlusconi, by contrast, has always presented himself as a uomo qualunque, an Ordinary Joe. People seem to admire him for his refusal to watch his step, for the fact that he can never be anything other than a bull in a china shop. We foreigners find his show-boating and back-slapping and gestures and jokes rather cringey, but in Italy they all make him seem somehow normal, part not of a snooty elite but of the people, part of the sacred popolo. He is, says the propaganda, a man just like you, a simple man who loves money and sex.
The difference is, of course, that he has a lot more of both. But even the fact that he's a billionaire doesn't seem to alienate the voters. Paradoxically, many people believe that his vast wealth means that he can't be bought or corrupted. Indeed, whenever he's been accused of corruption, the accusation hasn't been that he's had his fingers in the till but precisely the opposite, that he was buying people rather than being bought. It's a subtle difference and it enables him to present himself as a man making financial sacrifices for the good of the country. You might not believe it, and I certainly don't, but millions of voting Italians clearly do.
And even if they didn't, there's the vexed question of whom else they would vote for. With Berlusconi you know, for better or for worse, what you're getting. If you vote for the Left, you've no idea what or whom you'll end up with. In the 10 years since I first moved to Italy, the Left has been led by, off the top of my head, Prodi, D'Alema, Amato, Rutelli, Fassino, Prodi again, Veltroni, Franceschini … and now they're about to start the electoral process for a new leader. There's something about the Left that is still reminiscent of the old-fashioned trasformismo, of the musical chairs of politics where everyone swaps places but no chair is ever taken away. It's the same merry-go-round of familiar faces, most of them decent enough but shockingly dull and very uninspiring. Next to Berlusconi, they seem short of red blood cells, short of chutzpah and charisma and cunning.
And it's cunning, of course, for which Berlusconi is truly admired. Being furbo – cunning or sly – isn't a slur in Italy; it's a sign that you can outsmart the rest, that you're clever enough to get away with it. Every time Berlusconi survives a scandal, his stock rises yet higher because people are in awe of how he does it. He's like Houdini, calmly shrugging off the shackles that magistrates and journalists and opposition politicians keep trying to put him in.
That admiration for his escapism suggests there's something about the moral geography in Italy that is simply different to our own. It's summed up in one of the adjectives most often applied to Berlusconi: spregiudicato. It's one of those words that is almost impossible to translate because it seems to have two contradictory meanings: both unconventional and unscrupulous. It implies someone who's without prejudice, a person who thinks for himself, a daring maverick. But it also means someone who disregards the rules, someone who rides roughshod over manners and etiquette and the accepted way of doing things. It sounds more of a criticism put like that, but in Italy the word is usually a compliment, especially when applied to the prime minister.
Funnily enough, that moral chasm between Italy and the rest of the world also helps Berlusconi maintain his grip on power. The more he's criticised abroad (and, let's be fair, barely a day goes by without some foreign publication putting the boot into the Italian electorate and their chosen leader), the more he plays the patriotic card. While the opposition quotes eagerly from the "authoritative" publication, Berlusconi accuses them of betrayal and portrays himself – another role with which so many identify – as the down-trodden victim, the hard-done-by Italian of old whom all foreigners love to hate. A lot of Italians are fed up of finger-wagging moralists from northern Europe telling them whom they should elect and, I suspect, vote Berlusconi almost as a declaration of independence. After centuries of being ruled by foreign powers – the papal states, the Habsburgs, the Bourbons and so on – they're determined that foreigners should keep out of their affairs. Especially the many affairs of their Prime Minister.
* Tobias Jones is the author of 'The Dark Heart of Italy'. His new book, 'The Salati Case', is published by Faber this week http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5664474/Silvio-Berlusconi-how-does-he-do-it.html
La cote de popularité de Berlusconi sous la barre des 50%
Silvio Berlusconi (Sipa)
NOUVELOBS.COM 28.06.2009
Moins de la moitié des Italiens (49%) se disent désormais satisfaits de leur chef du gouvernement. Cependant, malgré tous les scandales, c'est encore chez les catholiques qu'il reçoit le plus d'opinions favorables.
Selon un sondage du Corriere della Sera publié dimanche 28 juin, la cote de popularité du chef du gouvernement italien Silvio Berlusconi est en baisse et s'établit à 49%.Alors qu'une moyenne de 51% d'Italiens indiquaient avoir un jugement positif sur leur chef du gouvernement pour la période janvier-mai, le plus gros tirage de la péninsule indique que désormais moins de la moitié des Italiens, 49%, sont satisfaits de leur chef du gouvernement.C'est principalement chez les femmes que la popularité du Cavaliere, empêtré depuis plusieurs semaines dans des scandales concernant sa vie privée, notamment avec des femmes, est en baisse : elles sont 47% à avoir un avis favorable contre 52% en janvier.
Forte baisse chez les femmesEn quelques semaines, Silvio Berlusconi a dû faire face à une tempête. Il a affronté l'ire de sa femme qui a demandé le divorce "parce qu'il fréquentait des mineures", essuyé un sérieux revers à cause d'informations de presse et de photos sur des fêtes dénudées dans sa villa de Sardaigne et une enquête sur l'utilisation par ses invités des avions du gouvernement a été ouverte.Cependant, malgré toutes ces révélations qui ont terni son image, le chef du gouvernement continue de recevoir l'approbation de la majorité des catholiques pratiquants, 54%. Mais là aussi on observe une baisse de sa popularité : moins 6 points par rapport à janvier.Selon le quotidien, les scandales liés à Silvio Berlusconi ont certainement eu un impact plus fort à l'étranger qu'en Italie, ce qui expliquerait cet assentiment chez les catholiques.Le journal précise même qu'une proportion, certes "très minoritaire", "environ 3% de l'électorat", "déclare éprouver de l'admiration et de l'envie" pour le Premier ministre.
Sondage réalisé par l'Ispo/Gruppo Phonemedia les 23 et 24 juin sur un échantillon représentatif de la population de 801 personnes. (Nouvelobs.com)
http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/actualites/international/europe/20090628.OBS2217/la_cote_de_popularite_de_berlusconi_sous_la_barre_des_5.html
The last days of the court of King Silvio
AFP/GETTY IMAGESBerlusconi's beauties: Family friend Noemi Letizia (left) and Italy's Minister for Equal Opportunities Mara Carfagna
Berlusconi always seemed immune to scandal, but lurid reports of the sexual carousel of parties, models and money are taking their toll. Now the Catholic Church has turned on him. Peter Popham reports
Saturday, 27 June 2009
There is a sudden stench of decay coming off the court of King Silvio.
The faithful retainers who have stood by him for decades, and grown immensely rich as a result, are still at his side: the pianist who tinkled along behind his singing on the cruise ships, the Sicilian lawyer fighting a long sentence for mafia crimes, the lawyer who did time for bribing Roman judges on Mr Berlusconi's account; none of them has dropped even a hint of dissidence or doubt in their padrone. But on the fringes of the circle, the unstoppable gusher of revelation and innuendo about the dozens of beautiful young women who flocked to his homes for all-night parties is beginning to do him palpable damage.
It is no longer only his political enemies in the media who are drawing attention to the grotesque spectacle of a 72-year-old Prime Minister cavorting with bimbos young enough to be his granddaughters. This week, after a long, pregnant silence, powerful forces in the Catholic Church have begun to speak out against his excesses. First it was L'Avvenire (The Future), the daily paper of the Italian bishops, which asked the Prime Minister to give Italy "clarification" about what had been going on. Then an important Catholic weekly, La Famiglia Cristiana, published stern comments about "moral decadence". And now three senior churchmen have criticised him publicly. One of them, the Bishop of Mazara del Vallo in Sicily, called on him to consider resigning. And one of the most powerful church figures in the country, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Bishops Conference, warned, without mentioning Mr Berlusconi by name, of "men drunk on a delirium of their own greatness, who touch the illusion of omnipotence and distort moral values".
Mr Berlusconi's court has no soothsayers to warn him of the Ides of March, but the sudden emergence of hostile noises from the Catholic Church is the modern Italian equivalent of that – especially as the Catholic Church continues to hold immense sway over public opinion.
So far, Mr Berlusconi has given no indication that the Church's opprobrium is having any effect on him, let alone that he is minded to heed calls to resign. On the contrary, at a press conference in the city of L'Aquila this week, where world leaders will be his guests for next month's G8 summit, he was in buoyant, defiant form.
"This is the way I'm made," he told journalists who asked if he was planning on changing his ways in the face of weeks of bad publicity, "and I don't change. People take me as they find me. And the Italians want me: I have the support of 61 per cent. They want me because they feel that I am good, generous, sincere, loyal, that I keep my promises."
Should the Prime Minister not adopt behaviour more becoming to a head of government, another reporter pursued, avoiding "dangerous situations" in future? "But why?" retorted Mr Berlusconi indignantly. "Life is so beautiful ... It's much better to live life normally, taking things as they come. Besides, at my age change is out of the question..." The campaign against him, he insisted, was nothing but "lies and rubbish".
It was another bravura performance by a man whose self-confidence is legendary. But the danger signs are accumulating. If the core of intimates around him remain solid, others formerly very close are beginning to peel away. One of the few intellectuals in his circle, an obese, red-bearded former Communist and CIA agent called Giuliano Ferrara who edits a slim but influential daily called Il Foglio, recently drew a dire analogy between Mr Berlusconi's present situation and that of Mussolini on 24 July 1943, the day before he was dismissed as Duce by the king and slunk up to Lake Garda to run the puppet statelet of Salo.
Mr Ferrara, whose political chat show was for years one of the liveliest and most unpredictable forums of debate on Italian television, was a minister in Mr Berlusconi's first government, and has remained loyal to his cause through thick and thin ever since. His defection is part of the collateral effect of Veronica Lario's divorce suit: Il Foglio is partly owned by Mr Berlusconi's estranged wife. Mr Ferrara admitted he was embarrassed when the rift between the two became open war, and it is now clear that his loyalties are split.
Mr Berlusconi, on the other hand, gives every indication of believing that the best is yet to come: the life force still flowing through him almost luminously, his ambition is still phosphorescent. Left-wing critics may jeer that "the swan has turned out to be a lame duck", but he has nearly four years of his term left to run, has a
large parliamentary majority, and his coalition allies, massaged by his money and favours, are giving him far less trouble than they did in his last term.
But it is the new sense of estrangement emerging from the Church and its friends which is shaping up to be his real problem. One of his loyalists, Claudio Scajola, a long-serving minister, remarked recently that "more prudence" might be good for him. Relations with the Catholic Church have long been ambivalent. He was unfaithful to his first wife and had three children outside his marriage before divorcing and marrying Veronica Lario in a civil ceremony. Like many other Italians he pays lip service to the Church, taking care not to cross it or defy it; as an arch anti-Communist, he has been regarded by the Church hierarchy as their worst enemy's enemy, even if not exactly their friend. Earlier this year that rather lukewarm relationship suddenly began heating up. Without warning he embraced a church-backed campaign to prevent a woman called Eulana Englaro, who had been in an irreversible coma for 17 years, from being taken off life support – a first step, the Church protested, towards legalising euthanasia. Mr Berlusconi had shown little interest in the subject before, but now he pulled out all the stops to keep Ms Englaro alive, in defiance of the Supreme Court. In the event she died before the emergency law he tried to rush through could be passed. But his campaign was an indication that he had grasped the vital importance of having the Church on his side as he attempted the boldest move of his extraordinary career: changing the constitution to give the President – today a ceremonial figure – enormous powers. It was an open secret that Mr Berlusconi was looking forward to moving up to the presidency at the end of his current term.
All that seems a long time ago. Mr Berlusconi insists now that nothing could be further from his mind than becoming President. And as the sleazy revelations about the "harem parties" in Sardinia and Rome continue to pour out, the Church is quietly putting him at arm's length.
Almost since the beginning of what the Italian press have begun to call "Sexgate", Mr Berlusconi has been claiming that there was a complotto, a conspiracy to bring him down, orchestrated by the usual suspects, the Italian left. We've heard it all before: Mr Berlusconi has always been quick to spot reds under the bed, even when disguised as journalists of the Financial Times or The Economist. But the relentless nature of the coverage of "Sexgate", when nothing of a criminal nature pertaining directly to Mr Berlusconi has yet emerged, suggests one of two things: either Italy's usually rather staid papers, suffering from steep circulation losses in recent months, have decided that British-style tabloid tales are the way to claw back their readers; or alternatively (or additionally), they really are out to get the Prime Minister, whatever it takes.
Last week the affair shifted up a gear as prosecutors in Bari, capital of the southern region of Puglia, became involved, investigating claims that anti-prostitution laws were violated when girls were allegedly paid to attend the Sardinian parties. As a result the scandal has now entered the realm of the judiciary. All eyes are now fixed on the second week of July, when the leaders of G8, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, fly to Italy for the summit in the earthquake-hit city of L'Aquila.
It is not inconceivable that the prosecutors of Bari are preparing a nasty surprise for the Prime Minister. In November 1994, a few months into his first term in office, Mr Berlusconi fatally lost face when he was served with notice that he was under investigation for corruption during a summit in Naples. It may be that something equally embarrassing – before the leaders and cameras of the world – will happen in L'Aquila. And given the importance of face in the Italian context, the consequences of that would be unpredictable. Even the most devoted Berlusconi courtiers are now beginning to think the unthinkable.
Friends turned foe: The models, the politicians, the wife and the priest
BARBARA MONTEREALE
She was invited to dinner at Mr Berlusconi's apartment in Rome with dozens of other women, then went on to join him at his villa in Sardinia, for which a man from Bari in southern Italy, Gianpaolo Tarantini, who is under investigation by anti-prostitution police, paid her €1,000. Montereale, 23, said that Mr Berlusconi gave her "rings and necklaces that he said he designed" and a CD of Neapolitan love songs. At the end of her stay he gave her a bag with "a very generous sum of money". This week, after her revelations became public, she said her car had been set alight and destroyed outside her home.
PATRIZIA D'ADDARIO
The 42-year-old prostitute from Bari in southern Italy claims the businessman Gianpaolo Tarantini paid her €2,000 to attend a party in Mr Berlusconi's Rome apartment. "I went down a long corridor that opened into a room where I found there were already many girls ... In total we were around 20." She said that the Prime Minister said: "How lovely you are!" She added: "He wanted me to sit next to him ... they put on a really long video of his meetings with international leaders ..." Barbara Montereale said she believed that Ms D'Addario spent the night with Berlusconi.
VERONICA LARIO
She was a busty young actress when Berlusconi saw her performing topless on stage and fell for her 30 years ago. The estrangement from her husband has been an open secret for more than a decade. In April she described Berlusconi's decision to put up showgirls as candidates for the European Parliament as "shameless rubbish", forcing him to drop the idea. Days later she sued for divorce.
GIULIANO FERRARA
A brilliant journalist and politician who served as the minister for relations with parliament in Berlusconi's short-lived first government, he has defended his ex-boss through thick and thin ever since. But his closeness to Berlusconi's estranged wife, a major investor in the paper he edits, now seems to be dragging him away from his original padrone.
ANGELO BAGNASCO
The president of the Italian Bishops' Conference and one of the most important clerics in the country. Attacked recently by a priest in his diocese for "treating Berlusconi too well", his oblique criticism of the Prime Minister this week may be a sign that he and the Conference are preparing to take a more robust stand.
CLAUDIO SCAJOLA
The Minister for Economic Development has served loyally at his master's side since throwing in his lot with him in 1995. But Scajola's roots are in the Christian Democrat party, and this week he became the first close political ally to issue a warning about behaviour and the need for the premier to be "more prudent" about his private life.
The faithful retainers who have stood by him for decades, and grown immensely rich as a result, are still at his side: the pianist who tinkled along behind his singing on the cruise ships, the Sicilian lawyer fighting a long sentence for mafia crimes, the lawyer who did time for bribing Roman judges on Mr Berlusconi's account; none of them has dropped even a hint of dissidence or doubt in their padrone. But on the fringes of the circle, the unstoppable gusher of revelation and innuendo about the dozens of beautiful young women who flocked to his homes for all-night parties is beginning to do him palpable damage.
It is no longer only his political enemies in the media who are drawing attention to the grotesque spectacle of a 72-year-old Prime Minister cavorting with bimbos young enough to be his granddaughters. This week, after a long, pregnant silence, powerful forces in the Catholic Church have begun to speak out against his excesses. First it was L'Avvenire (The Future), the daily paper of the Italian bishops, which asked the Prime Minister to give Italy "clarification" about what had been going on. Then an important Catholic weekly, La Famiglia Cristiana, published stern comments about "moral decadence". And now three senior churchmen have criticised him publicly. One of them, the Bishop of Mazara del Vallo in Sicily, called on him to consider resigning. And one of the most powerful church figures in the country, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Bishops Conference, warned, without mentioning Mr Berlusconi by name, of "men drunk on a delirium of their own greatness, who touch the illusion of omnipotence and distort moral values".
Mr Berlusconi's court has no soothsayers to warn him of the Ides of March, but the sudden emergence of hostile noises from the Catholic Church is the modern Italian equivalent of that – especially as the Catholic Church continues to hold immense sway over public opinion.
So far, Mr Berlusconi has given no indication that the Church's opprobrium is having any effect on him, let alone that he is minded to heed calls to resign. On the contrary, at a press conference in the city of L'Aquila this week, where world leaders will be his guests for next month's G8 summit, he was in buoyant, defiant form.
"This is the way I'm made," he told journalists who asked if he was planning on changing his ways in the face of weeks of bad publicity, "and I don't change. People take me as they find me. And the Italians want me: I have the support of 61 per cent. They want me because they feel that I am good, generous, sincere, loyal, that I keep my promises."
Should the Prime Minister not adopt behaviour more becoming to a head of government, another reporter pursued, avoiding "dangerous situations" in future? "But why?" retorted Mr Berlusconi indignantly. "Life is so beautiful ... It's much better to live life normally, taking things as they come. Besides, at my age change is out of the question..." The campaign against him, he insisted, was nothing but "lies and rubbish".
It was another bravura performance by a man whose self-confidence is legendary. But the danger signs are accumulating. If the core of intimates around him remain solid, others formerly very close are beginning to peel away. One of the few intellectuals in his circle, an obese, red-bearded former Communist and CIA agent called Giuliano Ferrara who edits a slim but influential daily called Il Foglio, recently drew a dire analogy between Mr Berlusconi's present situation and that of Mussolini on 24 July 1943, the day before he was dismissed as Duce by the king and slunk up to Lake Garda to run the puppet statelet of Salo.
Mr Ferrara, whose political chat show was for years one of the liveliest and most unpredictable forums of debate on Italian television, was a minister in Mr Berlusconi's first government, and has remained loyal to his cause through thick and thin ever since. His defection is part of the collateral effect of Veronica Lario's divorce suit: Il Foglio is partly owned by Mr Berlusconi's estranged wife. Mr Ferrara admitted he was embarrassed when the rift between the two became open war, and it is now clear that his loyalties are split.
Mr Berlusconi, on the other hand, gives every indication of believing that the best is yet to come: the life force still flowing through him almost luminously, his ambition is still phosphorescent. Left-wing critics may jeer that "the swan has turned out to be a lame duck", but he has nearly four years of his term left to run, has a
large parliamentary majority, and his coalition allies, massaged by his money and favours, are giving him far less trouble than they did in his last term.
But it is the new sense of estrangement emerging from the Church and its friends which is shaping up to be his real problem. One of his loyalists, Claudio Scajola, a long-serving minister, remarked recently that "more prudence" might be good for him. Relations with the Catholic Church have long been ambivalent. He was unfaithful to his first wife and had three children outside his marriage before divorcing and marrying Veronica Lario in a civil ceremony. Like many other Italians he pays lip service to the Church, taking care not to cross it or defy it; as an arch anti-Communist, he has been regarded by the Church hierarchy as their worst enemy's enemy, even if not exactly their friend. Earlier this year that rather lukewarm relationship suddenly began heating up. Without warning he embraced a church-backed campaign to prevent a woman called Eulana Englaro, who had been in an irreversible coma for 17 years, from being taken off life support – a first step, the Church protested, towards legalising euthanasia. Mr Berlusconi had shown little interest in the subject before, but now he pulled out all the stops to keep Ms Englaro alive, in defiance of the Supreme Court. In the event she died before the emergency law he tried to rush through could be passed. But his campaign was an indication that he had grasped the vital importance of having the Church on his side as he attempted the boldest move of his extraordinary career: changing the constitution to give the President – today a ceremonial figure – enormous powers. It was an open secret that Mr Berlusconi was looking forward to moving up to the presidency at the end of his current term.
All that seems a long time ago. Mr Berlusconi insists now that nothing could be further from his mind than becoming President. And as the sleazy revelations about the "harem parties" in Sardinia and Rome continue to pour out, the Church is quietly putting him at arm's length.
Almost since the beginning of what the Italian press have begun to call "Sexgate", Mr Berlusconi has been claiming that there was a complotto, a conspiracy to bring him down, orchestrated by the usual suspects, the Italian left. We've heard it all before: Mr Berlusconi has always been quick to spot reds under the bed, even when disguised as journalists of the Financial Times or The Economist. But the relentless nature of the coverage of "Sexgate", when nothing of a criminal nature pertaining directly to Mr Berlusconi has yet emerged, suggests one of two things: either Italy's usually rather staid papers, suffering from steep circulation losses in recent months, have decided that British-style tabloid tales are the way to claw back their readers; or alternatively (or additionally), they really are out to get the Prime Minister, whatever it takes.
Last week the affair shifted up a gear as prosecutors in Bari, capital of the southern region of Puglia, became involved, investigating claims that anti-prostitution laws were violated when girls were allegedly paid to attend the Sardinian parties. As a result the scandal has now entered the realm of the judiciary. All eyes are now fixed on the second week of July, when the leaders of G8, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, fly to Italy for the summit in the earthquake-hit city of L'Aquila.
It is not inconceivable that the prosecutors of Bari are preparing a nasty surprise for the Prime Minister. In November 1994, a few months into his first term in office, Mr Berlusconi fatally lost face when he was served with notice that he was under investigation for corruption during a summit in Naples. It may be that something equally embarrassing – before the leaders and cameras of the world – will happen in L'Aquila. And given the importance of face in the Italian context, the consequences of that would be unpredictable. Even the most devoted Berlusconi courtiers are now beginning to think the unthinkable.
Friends turned foe: The models, the politicians, the wife and the priest
BARBARA MONTEREALE
She was invited to dinner at Mr Berlusconi's apartment in Rome with dozens of other women, then went on to join him at his villa in Sardinia, for which a man from Bari in southern Italy, Gianpaolo Tarantini, who is under investigation by anti-prostitution police, paid her €1,000. Montereale, 23, said that Mr Berlusconi gave her "rings and necklaces that he said he designed" and a CD of Neapolitan love songs. At the end of her stay he gave her a bag with "a very generous sum of money". This week, after her revelations became public, she said her car had been set alight and destroyed outside her home.
PATRIZIA D'ADDARIO
The 42-year-old prostitute from Bari in southern Italy claims the businessman Gianpaolo Tarantini paid her €2,000 to attend a party in Mr Berlusconi's Rome apartment. "I went down a long corridor that opened into a room where I found there were already many girls ... In total we were around 20." She said that the Prime Minister said: "How lovely you are!" She added: "He wanted me to sit next to him ... they put on a really long video of his meetings with international leaders ..." Barbara Montereale said she believed that Ms D'Addario spent the night with Berlusconi.
VERONICA LARIO
She was a busty young actress when Berlusconi saw her performing topless on stage and fell for her 30 years ago. The estrangement from her husband has been an open secret for more than a decade. In April she described Berlusconi's decision to put up showgirls as candidates for the European Parliament as "shameless rubbish", forcing him to drop the idea. Days later she sued for divorce.
GIULIANO FERRARA
A brilliant journalist and politician who served as the minister for relations with parliament in Berlusconi's short-lived first government, he has defended his ex-boss through thick and thin ever since. But his closeness to Berlusconi's estranged wife, a major investor in the paper he edits, now seems to be dragging him away from his original padrone.
ANGELO BAGNASCO
The president of the Italian Bishops' Conference and one of the most important clerics in the country. Attacked recently by a priest in his diocese for "treating Berlusconi too well", his oblique criticism of the Prime Minister this week may be a sign that he and the Conference are preparing to take a more robust stand.
CLAUDIO SCAJOLA
The Minister for Economic Development has served loyally at his master's side since throwing in his lot with him in 1995. But Scajola's roots are in the Christian Democrat party, and this week he became the first close political ally to issue a warning about behaviour and the need for the premier to be "more prudent" about his private life.
Silvio Berlusconi brands sex claims by Patrizia D’Addario as trash
(Rex) Patrizua D'Addario said Silvio Berlusconi invited her to join him in the shower
June 28, 2009 - From The Sunday Times
In typically flamboyant style, Silvio Berlusconi has invited the world’s press on board Europe’s largest cruise ship tomorrow to hear him announce his plans for hosting next month’s G8 summit.
Italy’s billionaire prime minister — a former cruise ship crooner — has been trying to portray himself as a statesman dedicated to solving the global economic problems. But his efforts have been undermined by fresh disclosures about his alleged night with a prostitute and explicit telephone conversations with a fixer who paid beautiful young women to attend his parties.
Patrizia D’Addario, 42, a former actress from Bari in southern Italy, says she spent the night of November 4, when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, at Palazzo Grazioli, Berlusconi’s Rome residence. She described the experience: “I never slept . . . He was tireless, a bull.”
Berlusconi, 72, has branded her account “trash and lies”, saying he did not remember her. He had never paid a woman for sex, he explained, adding: “I never understood what the satisfaction is when you are missing the pleasure of conquest.”
Accounts given to acquaintances and prosecutors led to an investigation into the alleged fixer, Giampaolo Tarantini, 34, a Bari businessman. He is suspected of abetting prostitution.
D’Addario described a dinner party that lasted until 3am and what followed. The other guests at the imposing Palazzo Grazioli were Tarantini and two young women — Barbara Montereale, 23, a model, and Lucia Rossini. After the dinner, Berlusconi led D’Addario and the two other women to another room.
“Do you remember how he caressed me while we were on the sofa? And how he caressed you and looked at me?” D’Addario asked Montereale in a telephone call recorded on June 7.
Montereale replied: “It was disgusting, he did everything in front of the bodyguards.”
Berlusconi asked D’Addario to stay and told the other two to leave. Photographs allegedly taken in Berlusconi’s bathroom by Montereale and Rossini before they left, in which they laughingly pose with a hairdryer, are timed 3.57am.
According to D’Addario, Berlusconi led her to a four-poster bed with white drapes and quilt which he said were a gift from Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister. She said he took half-a-dozen ice-cold showers during the night and she joined him at his request.
At one point D’Addario later told a friend: “He suddenly stopped moving and I thought to myself, thank God, he’s fallen asleep. But it didn’t last.”
D’Addario confided she had felt embarrassed when a staff member walked into the bedroom in the morning with a suit for the prime minister, reminding him he was due to make a statement about Obama’s victory. Berlusconi told her to wait because he wanted to have breakfast with her.
While D’Addario waited, she went to the bathroom and took photographs. She later switched her recorder on and the tape captured the voice of a man asking: “Do you want tea or coffee?” She left the residence at about 11am.
On her return to Bari that afternoon, D’Addario also recorded a call on her mobile phone. “Bambina mia \!” Berlusconi greeted her. He asked her why she sounded as though she had a hoarse voice and she explained: “It was the showers.”
D’Addario, who has a 13- year-old daughter, has given prosecutors six audio tapes, one of which was allegedly recorded that night, and which include intimate details; she also filmed the bedroom with her mobile phone.
She had already recorded parts of a dinner party at the same residence two weeks earlier which, she says, she was paid £850 to attend.
Telephone taps for the investigation into Tarantini include dozens of explicit conversations in which Berlusconi talks to him about politics, parties and above all women, the magazine L’espresso reported on Friday. Berlusconi described what kind of women — down to hair colour and vital statistics — he wanted to invite to Rome and his Villa Certosa in Sardinia.
The conversations were often coarse, with Berlusconi chatting about what had happened on party nights. In a video on the magazine’s website he wears a white dinner jacket at a Villa Certosa party on August 11, 2008, attended by some 40 guests, many of them young women. Tarantini sits opposite the prime minister.
One of the guests, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, sings Ordinary World to shrieks from the women. Berlusconi then sings himself. The video also shows scantily dressed young women on merry-go-round horses in the estate’s grounds.
In an interview with The Sunday Times last week, Montereale denied doing “anything erotic” at Berlusconi’s home. “Tarantini paid me for going to the party as a hostess, not as an escort girl,” she said.
She has said that Berlusconi gave her £8,500 as a gift after a party in Sardinia in January because she was struggling to make ends meet.
Prosecutors have so far questioned some 20 women who are understood to have taken part in five parties at Berlusconi’s Rome residence and at least two in Sardinia.
The prime minister exuded confidence last week, saying he had no plans to change. “The Italians want me. I have a 61% popularity rating. They want me because I’m kind, generous, sincere, loyal and I keep my promises,” he said. Three weeks ago he had boasted that private surveys showed 75% of Italians approved of him.
In his first admission that he may have made a mistake, he said: “Unfortunately we invited the wrong person and he in turn invited the wrong person. But that happens to hundreds of people.”
In an interview with the newspaper Il Giornale yesterday, Tarantini apologised to Berlusconi and said he had no idea D’Addario was a prostitute. He took beautiful women to Berlusconi’s parties only “to look good”, paying no more than their expenses, he added.
The scandal is an embarrassment to Berlusconi as he prepares for the G8 summit on July 8-10. The revelations about his private life have weakened his political position in Italy and although there is no immediate threat, allies in his centre-right coalition are privately daring to contemplate a “post-Berlusconi” era.
Insiders say Gianni Letta, Berlusconi’s undersecretary and key lieutenant, has distanced himself from the prime minister and has for several months declined his invitations to dinner.
“Berlusconi has turned into the opposite of King Midas: he dirties everything he touches,” a disaffected associate said.
The disclosures have prompted a rare public show of disapproval from within the Catholic church, with Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian bishops’ conference, admonishing in a homily: “Beware of the man who, inebriated by his desire for greatness, deludes himself into thinking he can be omnipotent and twists moral values.”
Aides to the prime minister say he is focusing on presenting a “can-do” image at the G8 and has drawn comfort from leaders, including Nicolas Sarkozy, who have agreed to tour the earthquake-hit city of L’Aquila with him.
James Walston, a professor of international relations at the American University in Rome, believes that Berlusconi will survive in office.
“Italians don’t really care about his private life — what matters to them is whether he gets the economy going again,” Walston said.
“But the body language at the G8 photocall will be pretty interesting: the other leaders will take one look at him and step back, as if he’s got a big wart on his face. I really don’t expect Obama to let Berlusconi grab him by the shoulder and pose next to him with big grins on their faces. And if he invites leaders to his Sardinian villa, as he loves to do, they’ll say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’.”
Deal Maker
Giampaolo Tarantini, the businessman at the centre of the scandal, used his friendship with Silvio Berlusconi to obtain access to the prime minister’s brother and a junior minister for a client of his lobbying firm, prosecutors suspect.
After setting up CG Consulting, an events and public relations company, last November, he obtained a £128,000-a-year contract from Enrico Intini, chairman of a company involved in environmental protection.
According to Intini, Tarantini secured two meetings for him with Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, owner of the Milan newspaper Il Giornale. Intini wanted help in testing some equipment in Lombardy and reportedly hoped that Paolo could influence local officials.
Tarantini also engineered a meeting for him with Guido Bertolaso, junior secretary for civil protection.
Tarantini denied that he had benefited from his relationship with Berlusconi. “I never talked with him about my companies,” he said.
John Follain - June 28, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6590890.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1
In typically flamboyant style, Silvio Berlusconi has invited the world’s press on board Europe’s largest cruise ship tomorrow to hear him announce his plans for hosting next month’s G8 summit.
Italy’s billionaire prime minister — a former cruise ship crooner — has been trying to portray himself as a statesman dedicated to solving the global economic problems. But his efforts have been undermined by fresh disclosures about his alleged night with a prostitute and explicit telephone conversations with a fixer who paid beautiful young women to attend his parties.
Patrizia D’Addario, 42, a former actress from Bari in southern Italy, says she spent the night of November 4, when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, at Palazzo Grazioli, Berlusconi’s Rome residence. She described the experience: “I never slept . . . He was tireless, a bull.”
Berlusconi, 72, has branded her account “trash and lies”, saying he did not remember her. He had never paid a woman for sex, he explained, adding: “I never understood what the satisfaction is when you are missing the pleasure of conquest.”
Accounts given to acquaintances and prosecutors led to an investigation into the alleged fixer, Giampaolo Tarantini, 34, a Bari businessman. He is suspected of abetting prostitution.
D’Addario described a dinner party that lasted until 3am and what followed. The other guests at the imposing Palazzo Grazioli were Tarantini and two young women — Barbara Montereale, 23, a model, and Lucia Rossini. After the dinner, Berlusconi led D’Addario and the two other women to another room.
“Do you remember how he caressed me while we were on the sofa? And how he caressed you and looked at me?” D’Addario asked Montereale in a telephone call recorded on June 7.
Montereale replied: “It was disgusting, he did everything in front of the bodyguards.”
Berlusconi asked D’Addario to stay and told the other two to leave. Photographs allegedly taken in Berlusconi’s bathroom by Montereale and Rossini before they left, in which they laughingly pose with a hairdryer, are timed 3.57am.
According to D’Addario, Berlusconi led her to a four-poster bed with white drapes and quilt which he said were a gift from Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister. She said he took half-a-dozen ice-cold showers during the night and she joined him at his request.
At one point D’Addario later told a friend: “He suddenly stopped moving and I thought to myself, thank God, he’s fallen asleep. But it didn’t last.”
D’Addario confided she had felt embarrassed when a staff member walked into the bedroom in the morning with a suit for the prime minister, reminding him he was due to make a statement about Obama’s victory. Berlusconi told her to wait because he wanted to have breakfast with her.
While D’Addario waited, she went to the bathroom and took photographs. She later switched her recorder on and the tape captured the voice of a man asking: “Do you want tea or coffee?” She left the residence at about 11am.
On her return to Bari that afternoon, D’Addario also recorded a call on her mobile phone. “Bambina mia \!” Berlusconi greeted her. He asked her why she sounded as though she had a hoarse voice and she explained: “It was the showers.”
D’Addario, who has a 13- year-old daughter, has given prosecutors six audio tapes, one of which was allegedly recorded that night, and which include intimate details; she also filmed the bedroom with her mobile phone.
She had already recorded parts of a dinner party at the same residence two weeks earlier which, she says, she was paid £850 to attend.
Telephone taps for the investigation into Tarantini include dozens of explicit conversations in which Berlusconi talks to him about politics, parties and above all women, the magazine L’espresso reported on Friday. Berlusconi described what kind of women — down to hair colour and vital statistics — he wanted to invite to Rome and his Villa Certosa in Sardinia.
The conversations were often coarse, with Berlusconi chatting about what had happened on party nights. In a video on the magazine’s website he wears a white dinner jacket at a Villa Certosa party on August 11, 2008, attended by some 40 guests, many of them young women. Tarantini sits opposite the prime minister.
One of the guests, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, sings Ordinary World to shrieks from the women. Berlusconi then sings himself. The video also shows scantily dressed young women on merry-go-round horses in the estate’s grounds.
In an interview with The Sunday Times last week, Montereale denied doing “anything erotic” at Berlusconi’s home. “Tarantini paid me for going to the party as a hostess, not as an escort girl,” she said.
She has said that Berlusconi gave her £8,500 as a gift after a party in Sardinia in January because she was struggling to make ends meet.
Prosecutors have so far questioned some 20 women who are understood to have taken part in five parties at Berlusconi’s Rome residence and at least two in Sardinia.
The prime minister exuded confidence last week, saying he had no plans to change. “The Italians want me. I have a 61% popularity rating. They want me because I’m kind, generous, sincere, loyal and I keep my promises,” he said. Three weeks ago he had boasted that private surveys showed 75% of Italians approved of him.
In his first admission that he may have made a mistake, he said: “Unfortunately we invited the wrong person and he in turn invited the wrong person. But that happens to hundreds of people.”
In an interview with the newspaper Il Giornale yesterday, Tarantini apologised to Berlusconi and said he had no idea D’Addario was a prostitute. He took beautiful women to Berlusconi’s parties only “to look good”, paying no more than their expenses, he added.
The scandal is an embarrassment to Berlusconi as he prepares for the G8 summit on July 8-10. The revelations about his private life have weakened his political position in Italy and although there is no immediate threat, allies in his centre-right coalition are privately daring to contemplate a “post-Berlusconi” era.
Insiders say Gianni Letta, Berlusconi’s undersecretary and key lieutenant, has distanced himself from the prime minister and has for several months declined his invitations to dinner.
“Berlusconi has turned into the opposite of King Midas: he dirties everything he touches,” a disaffected associate said.
The disclosures have prompted a rare public show of disapproval from within the Catholic church, with Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian bishops’ conference, admonishing in a homily: “Beware of the man who, inebriated by his desire for greatness, deludes himself into thinking he can be omnipotent and twists moral values.”
Aides to the prime minister say he is focusing on presenting a “can-do” image at the G8 and has drawn comfort from leaders, including Nicolas Sarkozy, who have agreed to tour the earthquake-hit city of L’Aquila with him.
James Walston, a professor of international relations at the American University in Rome, believes that Berlusconi will survive in office.
“Italians don’t really care about his private life — what matters to them is whether he gets the economy going again,” Walston said.
“But the body language at the G8 photocall will be pretty interesting: the other leaders will take one look at him and step back, as if he’s got a big wart on his face. I really don’t expect Obama to let Berlusconi grab him by the shoulder and pose next to him with big grins on their faces. And if he invites leaders to his Sardinian villa, as he loves to do, they’ll say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’.”
Deal Maker
Giampaolo Tarantini, the businessman at the centre of the scandal, used his friendship with Silvio Berlusconi to obtain access to the prime minister’s brother and a junior minister for a client of his lobbying firm, prosecutors suspect.
After setting up CG Consulting, an events and public relations company, last November, he obtained a £128,000-a-year contract from Enrico Intini, chairman of a company involved in environmental protection.
According to Intini, Tarantini secured two meetings for him with Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, owner of the Milan newspaper Il Giornale. Intini wanted help in testing some equipment in Lombardy and reportedly hoped that Paolo could influence local officials.
Tarantini also engineered a meeting for him with Guido Bertolaso, junior secretary for civil protection.
Tarantini denied that he had benefited from his relationship with Berlusconi. “I never talked with him about my companies,” he said.
John Follain - June 28, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6590890.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1
venerdì 26 giugno 2009
The Bishop of Assisi succeeds in preventing Dario Fo from rehearsing Giotto in front of the Basilica.
Dario Fo censurato ad Assisi, nessun giornale nazionale, nessun tg riprende la notizia
The recital should have taken place in Assisi between the 2nd and the 5th of June but it would have most certainly caused a scandal. Not from a religious point of view, no, Dario Fo solely had the intention, through this new performance of his, of proving that a highly diffused belief is wrong.
The paintings within the Upper Basilica or Basilica Superiore attributed to Giotto in fact are not Giotto’s work. And the interesting thing about the matter is that besides being supported by the Franciscan friars of Assisi, Dario Fo’s thesis regarding those extraordinary paintings/frescos proves that Giotto was not the author but another or other great contemporary Maestro/s realized those breathtaking frescos.
Dario Fo created a lecture-performance based upon the above thesis. The performance in divided into three separate evening events, the time needed to argue his thesis basing it upon different historical and technical details. In particular, the fact that every school from Roman to Tuscan, had a particular, diverse and personalized technique of representing images through painting and the outlines or silhouettes used to reproduce the paintings themselves diversified in style and execution.
All these technical elements create a sort of fingerprint hidden behind the painting itself, fingerprint that guarantees and assures that Giotto can’t have participated to the realization of the masterpiece in the nave of the Upper Basilica unless in the role of simple assistant or apprentice.
But the cultural importance of the performance that should have been rehearsed by Dario Fo with the support of the Mayor of Assisi Claudio Ricci, wasn’t enough for the Bishop Domenico Sorrentino who did not withdraw his veto.
Pop songs in front of the Basilica of San Francesco are fine, young girls dancing and even cabaret is acceptable but, please, do not perform anything from the history of art!
Incredible that in the year 2009 in Italy someone still can veto or forbid a Nobel Prize Winner of speaking of Art in front of a church.
The performance “ Giotto o non Giotto” (Giotto or not Giotto) will be recited in July as follows:
2-3 July in Cesena at the Rocca Malatestina
8-9 July in Florence in front of the Basilica of Santa Croce
25-25 July in Perugia in the San Francesco in Campo square
2-3 July in Cesena at the Rocca Malatestina
8-9 July in Florence in front of the Basilica of Santa Croce
25-25 July in Perugia in the San Francesco in Campo square
Berlusconi Pleads Case as Italy’s Tolerance Wanes
Benoit Doppagne/European Pressphoto Agency
In an exclusive interview to be published Wednesday in Chi magazine, which Mr. Berlusconi owns and which is Italy’s equivalent of People, he was asked if he had ever paid a woman “so she would be with him.”
“Naturally, no,” he responded. “I have never understood what satisfaction there is if not in the pleasure of conquest.”
“There is nothing in my private life for which I should apologize,” Mr. Berlusconi added, according to a copy of the interview sent by the magazine to reporters on Tuesday in an e-mail message.
Mr. Berlusconi, 72, has been under fire over the past several months, when his wifeaccused him of consorting with very young women, including one whose 18th-birthday party he attended in Naples in April.
Speculation about the nature of Mr. Berlusconi’s relationship with the 18-year-old, Noemi Letizia, dominated the national conversation before elections for the European Parliamentthis month, which the prime minister’s center-right coalition won, though with a smaller margin than anticipated.
Mr. Berlusconi’s charismatic persona — as much showman as statesman — has always been a central part of his appeal. And Italians are generally forgiving of personal lives that would topple politicians elsewhere.
But in recent days, a new scandal has erupted as three women said that they were paid to attend parties at Mr. Berlusconi’s official Rome residence and that they were given jewelry. The depiction of the prime minister’s residence as a kind of Playboy Mansion with spotty security has shifted the public mood in Italy.
Although Mr. Berlusconi governs virtually unopposed, because of the collapse of the country’s left and his popular support among Italians, some analysts say they believe that the questions about his personal life could start depleting his political capital.
The more he is depicted as morally compromised, the harder it will be for him to govern, they say. “He could face a war of attrition,” said Stefano Folli, a columnist for the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. The simmering scandal is “a point of political weakness,” he said, adding, “It poses greater difficulty for governing even his allies.”
Members of Mr. Berlusconi’s center-right coalition have not leapt to his defense. And the Catholic Church has been more insistent in its criticism.
L’Avvenire, a newspaper published by the Italian Bishops Conference, said Friday that given the “growing unease” about Mr. Berlusconi’s personal life, it was necessary “to arrive as quickly as possible at a sufficient clarification.”
One of the women who said they were paid to attend parties at the prime minister’s residence, Patrizia D’Addario, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera last week that she had visited the residence several times, and that Mr. Berlusconi asked her to spend the night once. She said she tape-recorded her visits and also took some photographs.
The link between Mr. Berlusconi and Ms. D’Addario emerged from a corruption investigation into a businessman from Bari who was said to have introduced them.
In his interview with Chi, Mr. Berlusconi said he did not recall the three women who said they were paid to attend the parties.
“I meet dozens and dozens of people,” he said. “I don’t want to offend anyone, but it’s evident that I can’t remember everyone.”
Mr. Berlusconi said that he thought the left was behind the investigation of the businessman and that it was trying to tarnish his image before Italy was scheduled to hostPresident Obama and other world leaders at the Group of 8 summit meeting from July 8 to 10. The meeting will be held in L’Aquila, the city devastated by an April 6 earthquakethat killed nearly 300 people and left 65,000 homeless.
The earthquake dominated headlines for only a few weeks before Mr. Berlusconi’s wife, Veronica Lario, said she wanted a divorce. Mr. Berlusconi told Chi he did not believe that reconciliation was possible.
“It was a deep wound,” he said. “I don’t know if time can diminish it.”
The interview was illustrated with photos of the prime minister posing with his children and grandchildren, but not his wife. Mr. Berlusconi was also shown with Mr. Obama, whom he met at the White House last week and with whom he said he shared “a mind-set of getting things done.”
By RACHEL DONADIO
A version of this article appeared in print on June 24, 2009, on page A6 of the New York edition.
Berlusconi caught on video?
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN/AFP/Getty Images
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has continued to deny allegations that young women were paid to attend his parties, and, er, cavort with him. Now, though, he's apparently been caught on video:
"Patrizia D’Addario, a former model and escort girl, said that she had given prosecutors audio tapes but also had secretly recorded video footage of her encounters in the Prime Minister’s Rome residence.
Ms D’Addario, 42, who was yesterday described by a senior government figure as a high-class prostitute, said that the footage showed her standing in front of a mirror. A bedroom with a framed photograph of Veronica Lario, Mr Berlusconi’s estranged wife, was in view. She said she had made the recordings “so that nobody could deny I had been there”[...]
Police said they were checking Ms D’Addario’s footage to ensure that the rooms shown were in the Prime Minister’s Palazzo Grazioli and that the voice on her tapes was Mr Berlusconi’s.
Three other women who claim that they were paid to attend Mr Berlusconi’s parties have also been interviewed by prosecutors. Mr Berlusconi, 72, who is not himself under investigation, has dismissed the allegations as falsehoods. He is said to have told aides that he does not remember Ms D’Addario.
Of course he doesn't remember her. Doesn't that face just ooze honesty? Then again, a day earlier, his lawyer even told the Corriere della Sierra, "It's seems a bit over the top to think that Berlusconi needs to pay...I think he could have them in large numbers for free."
Fri, 06/19/2009 - A blog by the editors of FOREIGN POLICY
Leaders' Wives Urged to Boycott Berlusconi
JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images
The recent hubbub surrounding Silvio Berlusconi is not the first time he has been accused of sexist behavior. The Italian Prime Minister has claimed the opposition "has no taste, not even when it comes to women," appointed several, er, striking, yet politically inexperienced women to ministerial posts, and been caught staring at the legs of the new Miss Italy. Life Magazine captured his reputation well with a gallery entitled "Future Berlusconi Appointees" and filled entirely with Miss Italy winners and Italian Miss World representatives.
Now, a trio of female academics have called on the wives of G8 leaders to send a message to Berlusconi:
Now, a trio of female academics have called on the wives of G8 leaders to send a message to Berlusconi:
" Wives of the world leaders due to attend next month’s G8 summit in Italy should boycott the meeting because of Silvio Berlusconi’s “sexist” and “offensive” attitude to women, a group of Italian female academics has said.
A number of wives, including Sarah Brown and Michelle Obama, are to join their husbands at the summit, although the wife of the Italian Prime Minister will not be hosting as she is seeking a divorce[...]
In the first sign of a public reaction against the stories of scores of young models attending parties thrown by the Prime Minister, 72, three social sciences academics have written an “Appeal to the First Ladies” and claim to have garnered “hundreds of signatures” in support of the letter.
“We are profoundly indignant, as women employed in the world of universities and culture, at the way in which the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi treats women both in public and in private” the letter reads.
Though such a boycott will not happen, it would be a powerful statement. Still, I do have to ask: why are the wives expected to attend in the first place? As Dana Goldstein pointed out, neither Mr. Angela Merkel nor Mr. Cristina Kirchner went to April's G20 meeting, yet all 18 wives attended. If those two find summits not worth their time, then surely the wives can find a more productive way to spend three days than making nice for the camera.
Tue, 06/23/2009 -
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/23/leaders_wives_urged_to_boycott_berlusconi
A blog by the editors of Foreign Policy
Chi ha l’onore e l’onere di servire il Paese, per di più con una così larga maggioranza, ha il dovere di dedicare tutto il suo tempo al "bene comune"
n. 26 del 28 giugno 2009 - Direttore: Antonio Sciortino
«Il presidente del Consiglio non deve illudersi che la Chiesa taccia. La Chiesa non rinfaccia nulla a nessuno, per carità cristiana, ma è evidente che i vescovi hanno una precisa morale da difendere». Così comincia l’intervista a monsignor Ghidelli, vescovo di Lanciano e Ortona, noto biblista, apparsa domenica 21 giugno sul Corriere della Sera, a proposito delle vicende che hanno investito una delle più alte cariche istituzionali del Paese.
Il suo disagio e quello di altri vescovi hanno fatto eco all’editoriale di Avvenire, in cui si chiedeva al presidente del Consiglio «un chiarimento sufficiente a sgomberare il terreno dagli interrogativi più pressanti, che non vengono solo dagli avversari politici ma anche da una parte di opinione pubblica non pregiudizialmente avversa al premier».
Il vescovo di Mazara del Vallo, monsignor Mogavero, ha aggiunto: «Tra il livello pubblico, di governo, e quello privato e inviolabile, di coscienza, c’è un terzo piano: quello dell’immagine. I comportamenti di chi governa possono determinare maggiore credibilità oppure una delegittimazione, parziale o totale. Certi comportamenti possono incrinare la fiducia fino a una delegittimazione di fatto».
Chi ha l’onore e l’onere di servire il Paese (senza servirsene), per di più con una larga maggioranza, quale mai si era vista nella storia della Repubblica, è doveroso che si dedichi a questo importante compito senza "distrazioni", che un capo di Governo non può permettersi. L’alta responsabilità comporta restrizioni di movimenti e comportamenti adeguati alla carica, per servire a tempo pieno il Paese e dedicarsi totalmente al "bene comune" dei cittadini.
A maggior ragione oggi, che il Paese è alle prese con una delle più gravi crisi economiche (ma anche morali) che abbia mai affrontato, con moltissime famiglie sulla soglia della povertà, lavoratori senza più occupazione e giovani precari a vita, senza futuro e speranza. Che esempio si dà alle giovani generazioni con comportamenti "gaudenti e libertini", o se inculchiamo loro i valori del successo, dei soldi, del potere: traguardi da raggiungere a ogni costo, anche tramite scorciatoie e strade poco limpide?
Oggi il Paese più che di polveroni e distrazioni, necessita di maggiore sobrietà, coerenza e rispetto delle regole. E, soprattutto, chiarezza. Non solo a parole, ma concretamente, con i fatti. A poco servono imbarazzanti e deboli difese d’ufficio dei vari "corifei", "caudatari" o "maschere salmodianti" (come li ha definiti qualcuno), che ci propinano a ogni ora ritornelli e moduli stantii, a difesa dell’indifendibile. Onel tentativo "autolesionista" di minimizzare tutto, spostando la mira su altri bersagli. Ancora peggio, poi, quando "la pezza è più grande dello sbrego" come si dice, e si definisce il presidente del Consiglio «l’utilizzatore finale» di un giro di prestazioni a pagamento (ammesso che sia vero), e si considerano le donne "merce", di cui «si potrebbe averne quantitativi gratis». Naturalmente.
Non basta la legittimazione del voto popolare o la pretesa del "buon governo" per giustificare qualsiasi comportamento, perché con Dio non è possibile stabilire un "lodo", tanto meno chiedergli l’"immunità morale". La morale è uguale per tutti: più alta è la responsabilità, più si ha il dovere del buon esempio. E della coerenza, che è ancora una virtù, e dà credibilità alle persone e alle loro azioni.
Sull’operato del presidente del Consiglio oggi fanno riflettere certi silenzi "pesanti", anche all’interno della stessa maggioranza. La Chiesa, però, non può abdicare alla sua missione e ignorare l’emergenza morale nella vita pubblica del Paese. Nessuno pensi di allettarla con promesse o ricattarla con minacce perché non intervenga e taccia. I cristiani (come dismostrano le lettere dei nostri lettori) sono frastornati e amareggiati da questo clima di decadimento morale dell’Italia, attendono dalla Chiesa una valutazione etica meno "disincantata". Non si può far finta che non stia succedendo nulla, o ignorare il disagio di fasce sempre più ampie della popolazione, e dei cristiani in particolare.
Il problema dell’esempio personale è inscindibile per chiunque accetta una carica pubblica. In altre nazioni, se i politici vengono meno alle regole (anche minime) o hanno comportamenti discutibili, sono costretti alle dimissioni. Perché tanta diversità in Italia? L’autorità senza esemplarità di comportamenti non ha alcuna autorevolezza e forza morale. È pura ipocrisia o convenienza di interessi privati. Chi esercita il potere, anche con un ampio consenso di popolo, non può pretendere una "zona franca" dall’etica. Né pensare di barattare la morale con promesse di leggi favorevoli alla Chiesa: è il classico "piatto di lenticchie", da respingere al mittente.
Parlando di De Gasperi, grande statista trentino, Benedetto XVI l’ha indicato come modello di moralità per i governanti: «Il ricordo della sua esperienza di governo e della sua testimonianza cristiana siano di incoraggiamento e stimolo per coloro che reggono le sorti dell’Italia, specialmente per quanti si ispirano al Vangelo». «De Gasperi», ha aggiunto il Papa, «è stato autonomo e responsabile nelle sue scelte politiche, senza servirsi della Chiesa per fini politici e senza mai scendere a compromessi con la sua retta coscienza».
In una nota pubblicata dal Sir (Servizio informazione religiosa, cioè l’agenzia di notizie dei vescovi) del 26 maggio scorso, Riccardo Moro afferma che le vicende personali del premier offrono «un contributo sgradevole al sereno sviluppo dei rapporti democratici». E al premier che assicura di "chiarire in futuro" i dubbi sollevati dalla stampa nazionale ed estera, chiede: «Ma se nulla di quanto è ignoto è riprovevole, perché rinviare? Se non vi è nulla da nascondere, alimentare i misteri rinviando spiegazioni, rivela una considerazione della stampa e dell’opinione pubblica particolarmente irriguardosa». E aggiunge: «La libera stampa indipendente è uno dei fondamenti della democrazia per il controllo sull’azione del Governo e per veicolare informazione e dialogo democratico tra i cittadini, non un disturbo nell’azione democratica».
Di fronte all’Italia che arranca, di fronte al polverone mediatico sulle vicende del premier, i problemi reali del Paese (famiglia, lavoro, immigrati, riforme...) sono passati in secondo ordine. C’è da augurarsi, quanto prima, che da una "politica da camera da letto" si passi alla vera politica delle "camere del Parlamento", restituite alla loro dignità e funzioni. Prima che la fiducia dei cittadini verso le istituzioni prenda una via senza ritorno. A tutto c’è un limite. Quel limite di decenza è stato superato. Qualcuno ne tragga le debite conseguenze.
D.A.
Il suo disagio e quello di altri vescovi hanno fatto eco all’editoriale di Avvenire, in cui si chiedeva al presidente del Consiglio «un chiarimento sufficiente a sgomberare il terreno dagli interrogativi più pressanti, che non vengono solo dagli avversari politici ma anche da una parte di opinione pubblica non pregiudizialmente avversa al premier».
Il vescovo di Mazara del Vallo, monsignor Mogavero, ha aggiunto: «Tra il livello pubblico, di governo, e quello privato e inviolabile, di coscienza, c’è un terzo piano: quello dell’immagine. I comportamenti di chi governa possono determinare maggiore credibilità oppure una delegittimazione, parziale o totale. Certi comportamenti possono incrinare la fiducia fino a una delegittimazione di fatto».
Chi ha l’onore e l’onere di servire il Paese (senza servirsene), per di più con una larga maggioranza, quale mai si era vista nella storia della Repubblica, è doveroso che si dedichi a questo importante compito senza "distrazioni", che un capo di Governo non può permettersi. L’alta responsabilità comporta restrizioni di movimenti e comportamenti adeguati alla carica, per servire a tempo pieno il Paese e dedicarsi totalmente al "bene comune" dei cittadini.
A maggior ragione oggi, che il Paese è alle prese con una delle più gravi crisi economiche (ma anche morali) che abbia mai affrontato, con moltissime famiglie sulla soglia della povertà, lavoratori senza più occupazione e giovani precari a vita, senza futuro e speranza. Che esempio si dà alle giovani generazioni con comportamenti "gaudenti e libertini", o se inculchiamo loro i valori del successo, dei soldi, del potere: traguardi da raggiungere a ogni costo, anche tramite scorciatoie e strade poco limpide?
Oggi il Paese più che di polveroni e distrazioni, necessita di maggiore sobrietà, coerenza e rispetto delle regole. E, soprattutto, chiarezza. Non solo a parole, ma concretamente, con i fatti. A poco servono imbarazzanti e deboli difese d’ufficio dei vari "corifei", "caudatari" o "maschere salmodianti" (come li ha definiti qualcuno), che ci propinano a ogni ora ritornelli e moduli stantii, a difesa dell’indifendibile. Onel tentativo "autolesionista" di minimizzare tutto, spostando la mira su altri bersagli. Ancora peggio, poi, quando "la pezza è più grande dello sbrego" come si dice, e si definisce il presidente del Consiglio «l’utilizzatore finale» di un giro di prestazioni a pagamento (ammesso che sia vero), e si considerano le donne "merce", di cui «si potrebbe averne quantitativi gratis». Naturalmente.
Non basta la legittimazione del voto popolare o la pretesa del "buon governo" per giustificare qualsiasi comportamento, perché con Dio non è possibile stabilire un "lodo", tanto meno chiedergli l’"immunità morale". La morale è uguale per tutti: più alta è la responsabilità, più si ha il dovere del buon esempio. E della coerenza, che è ancora una virtù, e dà credibilità alle persone e alle loro azioni.
Sull’operato del presidente del Consiglio oggi fanno riflettere certi silenzi "pesanti", anche all’interno della stessa maggioranza. La Chiesa, però, non può abdicare alla sua missione e ignorare l’emergenza morale nella vita pubblica del Paese. Nessuno pensi di allettarla con promesse o ricattarla con minacce perché non intervenga e taccia. I cristiani (come dismostrano le lettere dei nostri lettori) sono frastornati e amareggiati da questo clima di decadimento morale dell’Italia, attendono dalla Chiesa una valutazione etica meno "disincantata". Non si può far finta che non stia succedendo nulla, o ignorare il disagio di fasce sempre più ampie della popolazione, e dei cristiani in particolare.
Il problema dell’esempio personale è inscindibile per chiunque accetta una carica pubblica. In altre nazioni, se i politici vengono meno alle regole (anche minime) o hanno comportamenti discutibili, sono costretti alle dimissioni. Perché tanta diversità in Italia? L’autorità senza esemplarità di comportamenti non ha alcuna autorevolezza e forza morale. È pura ipocrisia o convenienza di interessi privati. Chi esercita il potere, anche con un ampio consenso di popolo, non può pretendere una "zona franca" dall’etica. Né pensare di barattare la morale con promesse di leggi favorevoli alla Chiesa: è il classico "piatto di lenticchie", da respingere al mittente.
Parlando di De Gasperi, grande statista trentino, Benedetto XVI l’ha indicato come modello di moralità per i governanti: «Il ricordo della sua esperienza di governo e della sua testimonianza cristiana siano di incoraggiamento e stimolo per coloro che reggono le sorti dell’Italia, specialmente per quanti si ispirano al Vangelo». «De Gasperi», ha aggiunto il Papa, «è stato autonomo e responsabile nelle sue scelte politiche, senza servirsi della Chiesa per fini politici e senza mai scendere a compromessi con la sua retta coscienza».
In una nota pubblicata dal Sir (Servizio informazione religiosa, cioè l’agenzia di notizie dei vescovi) del 26 maggio scorso, Riccardo Moro afferma che le vicende personali del premier offrono «un contributo sgradevole al sereno sviluppo dei rapporti democratici». E al premier che assicura di "chiarire in futuro" i dubbi sollevati dalla stampa nazionale ed estera, chiede: «Ma se nulla di quanto è ignoto è riprovevole, perché rinviare? Se non vi è nulla da nascondere, alimentare i misteri rinviando spiegazioni, rivela una considerazione della stampa e dell’opinione pubblica particolarmente irriguardosa». E aggiunge: «La libera stampa indipendente è uno dei fondamenti della democrazia per il controllo sull’azione del Governo e per veicolare informazione e dialogo democratico tra i cittadini, non un disturbo nell’azione democratica».
Di fronte all’Italia che arranca, di fronte al polverone mediatico sulle vicende del premier, i problemi reali del Paese (famiglia, lavoro, immigrati, riforme...) sono passati in secondo ordine. C’è da augurarsi, quanto prima, che da una "politica da camera da letto" si passi alla vera politica delle "camere del Parlamento", restituite alla loro dignità e funzioni. Prima che la fiducia dei cittadini verso le istituzioni prenda una via senza ritorno. A tutto c’è un limite. Quel limite di decenza è stato superato. Qualcuno ne tragga le debite conseguenze.
D.A.
Scrivere a: don.antonio@stpauls.it
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