lunedì 21 novembre 2011

Berlusconi Exits, and an Era of Sexist Buffoonery Is Over


Entertainer-politician-buffoon Berlusconi exits stage left. But was he really that bad?

At long last, and perhaps mercifully, Silvio Berlusconi—Viagra-driven charlatan,opera buffa showman—has departed the Italian scene, ushered off by the bankers and fellow leaders who always despised his proletarian panache. The celebrations have been unanimous, just as they have been unanimously self-congratulatory. I am one to cast a stone because I feel the same way: Berlusconi’s departure must surely be for the good of Italy. However, the avalanches of pious condemnation that have been visited upon his fascinatingly artificial-looking pate must also bear some scrutiny. Our shared distaste for the prime minister says a great deal about us. For Italy, The Washington Postremarked, “reality has set in."
But has it? We forget that Berlusconi has always been hated, and I suspect he always relished that fact. He was first loathed in the early '90s by the left, and by virtually all bien-pensants, because he promised to reform Italy’s sclerotic labor market and its rigid, bureaucratic way of running an economy. He is now roundly condemned by a Greek chorus of informed opinion for failing to reform Italy’s sclerotic labor market and its bureaucratic way of running an economy. Not just condemned, but actually deposed.
Never mind that he is an elected national leader. Since when did bankers, Brussels bureaucrats, and the leaders of other polities acquire the right to dispose of elected leaders, or even to influence such outcomes? Berlusconi’s media monopolies, his burlesque and vulgar promiscuity and his financial dealings are open to question, to put it mildly. But his behavior is not why he was removed.
EU SUMMIT

Berlusconi is a little like media baron Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand (so often unwittily dubbed “the Berlusconi of Asia”), who was and is similarly loathed by the enlightened middle classes—but adored by the working classes who voted him into office. Thaksin was also removed by a bloodless coup; but it didn’t end so bloodlessly when his supporters descended on Bangkok with fury.

We should be more careful. In Thailand, as in Italy, an aesthetic class contempt and moral indignation have been conflated with a nation’s structural problems, which the world rather cavalierly chose to believe were incarnated in one leader’s objectionable character. But the two things are oceans apart.

Thaksin’s removal did not solve Thailand’s class war, it intensified it. Similarly, Italy’s structural problems—its huge debt, and the fact that it has grown less than virtually any economy in the world over the last decade (excluding Zimbabwe)—have, I suspect, less to do with Berlusconi than we think, despite the arguments that have been offered for some years now by The Economistand countless other commentators. The Italian state has been a corrupt bureaucratic behemoth since its inception, and if any other leader of the last century has been able to reform it better than Berlusconi, I would like to know who that illustrious superman was. Mussolini?

So, the big question remains: Is Berlusconi quantitatively more corrupt than his predecessors? I refer readers to the glorious film Il Divo, which depicts with savage ire and wit the political life of Giulio Andreotti in the 1970s. Very well, you may say, but that doesn’t excuse Berlusconi’s buffooneries or prevent Italians from doing better in the future. No indeed. But it should make one cautious about anthropomorphizing a nation’s dysfunctions.

This is particularly obvious when we look at the obsessing over Berlusconi’s misdeeds in the domain of what is now known in his honor as “bunga-bunga” (the curious etymology of this term can be investigated on Google).

Many commentators have taken the occasion of The Great Seducer’s downfall to remind us that he is, after all, the incarnation of a macho culture that treats its women as second-class citizens. He received, therefore, a proper comeuppance. Furthermore, his outrageous antics with 17-year-old hookers and such—the very embodiment, so we are told, of Italy’s sexist backwardness—are often held to illustrate everything that has gone wrong with the country economically, however dubious this connection actually is.

My colleague in these pages, Barbie Latza Nadeau, made precisely this argument in an otherwise excellent and subtle article a few days ago, titled “Not Just Any Old Charlatan.”

In it, Nadeau pointed out that the World Economic Forum, in its 2010 global gender-gap study of the opportunities offered to women, ranked Italy a lowly 74th. This placed it below Cuba and Venezuela, and explained Italy’s lack of economic efficiency and competitiveness. Thus, Nadeau argued, it all makes sense: Berlusconi had to go because his brazen sexism, channelled directly into Italian living rooms through his near-95-percent power over the media—was holding the country up economically.

If any other leader of the last century has been able to reform Italy better than Berlusconi, I would like to know who that illustrious superman was. Mussolini?

“He is the great enabler,” Nadeau wrote, “who, for nearly two decades, has allowed Italians to feel they can cheat on anything from their taxes to their spouses because he does it himself. Berlusconi knows the Italian psyche well in part because he’s created it through his media influence.” But this is surely naïve. When have Italians not behaved thus? A hundred years ago, English-speaking visitors were constantly wringing their hands over intractable and charming Italian immorality. Not paying their taxes or honoring their marriage vows was the least of it. Nadeau then quotes journalist Beppe Severgnini: “His passion is boundless and seems to have several strands: the idealization of youth, the commercial value of beauty, the appreciation of women, and male pride. It fuels daydreams and provides justification for inexcusable yearnings.” But this sounds like all the world of culture to me. And what, exactly, would an excusable yearning be as opposed to an “inexcusable” one?

Turning back to our U.N. study, however, one could simply argue that, politicians’ shenanigans aside, a country that was ranked only 74th on the gender-gap index could hardly be a global powerhouse. But, actually, it could. China is ranked 61st on the U.N. list, and is by far the most dynamic economy on earth. The world’s second-fastest-growing economy is that of India, which occupies an even more miserably low rung on the same ladder: 113th. And the third-fastest-growing economy is Turkey, which is placed even further down—that is, only a few rungs from bottom at a wretched 122nd. Poor old Turkey, how will it survive with a mere 8 percent growth a year? If only it could climb up to Greece’s gender-gap level. Japan, too, is 98th. So what does this tell us about Berlusconi’s ailing Italy?

As it happens, nothing. Iceland earns the number one spot for gender equality. That’s right: the country that was officially declared bankrupt last year offers the most economic opportunity for women. The Philippines is in 8th place, Lesotho 9th, and Burundi 24th. Mozambique comes in at number 26. Kazakhstan also scores significantly better than Berlusconi’s Italy, as does Tanzania. Sure, it’s a fine life for the women of Bujumbura and Almaty and Maputo, and they wouldn’t exchange it for macho Rome or Venice in a thousand years. (Or would they?) But then again, all of us who grew up in Italy know it’s a matriarchy from top to bottom. Unlike Kazakhstan and Lesotho, Italy is a country secretly run by women.

Among those matriarchs are countless Italian women who have told me that they find our own sexual politics “repellent” and “sad.” (Who can blame them?) Considerately, however, they refrain from explaining America’s financial woes via our statistics for violent rape, stratospheric by Italian standards, or by reference to the naughtiness of Eliot Spitzer or to the Other Great Seducer who got a blowjob in the Oval Office. This is merciful, as well as polite. They do not talk about America’s “worst instincts”; they don’t talk about our sexuality at all. Perhaps we don’t have any. But think of the fun they could have with it if they wanted.

Maybe, though, this is ultimately missing the point. What is resented most about Berlusconi is his pleb brashness, his insolent lack of repentance. He infuriates because he is brazen. In America, when politicians are caught out in sexual escapades, we relish those pitiful press conferences where mostly male penitents grovel and humiliate themselves before a disapproving congregation. Berlusconi instead gives the congregation the middle finger and labels them hypocrites. It’s not simpatico, and it calls collective our virtue into disrepute.

Now, however, all that is water under the bridge. This goatish incarnation of unacceptable machismo departs in order to save the crumbling euro’s brand name, and for no other reason than that his insalubrious image is incompatible with it. But it’s all a card trick. The euro’s fall has nothing to do with Berlusconi’s dalliances with 17-year-old hookers, or his being the leader of a nation which is 74th on the U.N.’s gender-gap list. It has to do with debt that is 120 percent of GDP and an economy that is largely uncompetitive. Berlusconi, it is true, did not cut this Gordian knot, but neither did he tie it in the first place. His erotic foibles are beside the point.

Berlusconi was axed because of the crisis of the euro. But his departure solves nothing related to the forces that created that crisis in the first place. The imbalance between deficits and productivity, the vast welfare machinery, the bureaucratizing of everyday economic life: these things are not even unique to Italy. They are common to the crisis of the West. Nevertheless, Italy will now be helmed by Mario Monti, a life-long technocrat and “professional economist,” the kind of man that we the middle classes find reassuring. We certainly cannot imagine him popping a blue pill and jumping into a Jacuzzi with a porn star.

Personally, I am glad. Mario Monti seems like a good and capable manager and he has, as newspapers like to say, credentials. Berlusconi is indeed unfit for office. It has escaped our attention, however, that it was functionaries and professional economists such as Monti who helped get us into this fiscal mess in the first place. Sexless and reassuring they may be, incapable of sin they may be, but they have screwed us royally all the same. Italy’s problems will remain as they always have, with the difference now that Berlusconi can play the role of scapegoat and sacrificial victim—and from now on, at least, he will not be entirely in the wrong when he paints himself as a martyr on the altar of a ruined sovereignty. In the end, it was not the Italians who removed him. It was the court of elite opinion.

Lawrence Osborne is the author, most recently, of Bangkok Days.

Not Just Any Old Charlatan


G20
Italy’s colorful P.M. refused to conform with the European establishment., Kevin Lamarque / Reuters-Landov


Nov 13, 2011 10:00 AM EST by
Barbie Latza Nadeau

Silvio Berlusconi embodies Italy’s greatest weaknesses and its worst instincts.

They are going to miss him when he’s gone. Though few Italians may admit it openly, Silvio Berlusconi is quintessentially one of them. For better or worse, his departure will leave a scar on the national psyche. It’s not so much his massive wealth or media influence that has kept him in power for the better part of 17 years. His edge lies in tempting the population to believe that they could live hisdolce vita—an equivalent of the American Dream of prosperity with the addition of scantily clad women.

The fact that it has taken a catastrophic near collapse of Italy’s (and Europe’s) economy for Italians to finally let him go is a testament to the country’s love of its rogue in office. Berlusconi is not just any old charlatan. He is the great enabler who, for nearly two decades, has allowed Italians to feel they can cheat on anything from their taxes to their spouses because he does it himself. Berlusconi knows the Italian psyche well in part because he’s created it through his media influence. And he has succeeded both personally and politically by playing to Italians’ greatest weaknesses and worst instincts. “His passion is boundless and seems to have several strands: the idealization of youth, the commercial value of beauty, the appreciation of women, and male pride,” says Beppe Severgnini, journalist and author of Mamma Mia. “It fuels daydreams and provides justification for inexcusable yearnings.”

“Berlusconismo,” as his influence has been dubbed in Italy, is about much more than his girls. He is a self-made man who started his career selling vacuum cleaners, then working as a crooner on cruise ships and in nightclubs. He is still an entertainer in many ways. Very much at home onstage, he mesmerizes audiences by immersing himself in their world, telling crude jokes and silly stories even as he delivers political messages. He has wrangled a fortune out of his real-estate and media holdings, cutting corners and skirting the law, leaving a trail of yet-unproven corruption charges and allegations in his wake. He criticizes authority, claiming the judiciary is out to get him as he tells of his own struggles with the law. He has been investigated for tax evasion, graft, abuse of office, and mafia collusion—not to mention for paying a 17-year-old for sex, all of which he denies. “It is the biggest persecution of a politician ever carried out in any democracy in history,” he told Newsweek in an interview in 2006. “But there is nothing in my life I have to be ashamed of.”
Empathy and envy both play a role in why Italians have voted him into power three times in the last 17 years. He has won 51 confidence votes in Parliament since being reelected in 2008. He is the third-richest man in Italy, with an estimated worth of more than $6.2 billion. Never mind that his wealth and success grew out of an era marred by deep-seated corruption. It’s the spoils of his dubious labor that they admire. He is known as “il cavaliere,” the knight. His lavish villas are enviable to everyday Italians who share cramped quarters with up to three generations of the same family. His public gaffes may cause embarrassment to the industrialists and political elite, but his working-class charm and cringeworthy comments are cheered in bars. Headlines of his orgiastic fetes—“bunga bunga”—make him a cult hero to a voting majority. After all, sex scandals at the age of 75 are a badge of honor in macho Italy. He even owns a soccer team—A.C. Milan—and a winning one at that.
Berlusconi came to power at a time when the conservative political elite were fearful of a growing left-leaning movement they called the “red peril.” Berlusconi represented a clear anti-communist choice that has always played a role in his electoral success. For some, like Lupo Rattazzi, a Harvard-educated airline entrepreneur who also happens to be a descendent of Italy’s seigniorial Agnelli family, Berlusconi played the communist card to his advantage time and again. “A majority of Italians do not want to be run by the heirs of the former Communist Party, let alone by the current ragtag army of splintered left-wing groups,” Rattazzi told Newsweek about Berlusconi’s appeal. “Believe me, it’s not so much about the bimbos and tax dodging.” Still, the harm to Italy’s reputation internationally is something that will take years to repair. “Personally I will miss nothing of him, in particular his absolutely atrocious jokes and the brutte figureabroad to which he was continuing to expose this great country. He was destroying the great brand that Italy is and he cannot be forgiven for that,” Rattazzi says. “In terms of his willingness to really attack the structural problems of Italy which require imposing serious sacrifices, he was incapable of doing so because he likes to be known as a ‘seducer’ and as such, he simply doesn’t like to deliver bad news to anyone.”
Opposition parliamentarian Andrea Sarubbi makes a different point. “Before Berlusconi, our governments changed every nine months or so,” he toldNewsweek. “He brought an era of stability in terms of continuation of the government.” He also polarized the country by turning every political debate into the equivalent of a sports competition. You were either with him or against him. “He reduced Italy to a mass of soccer fans. Parliament was often like being at a stadium,” Sarubbi says. “But what’s incredible is that after 17 years, in the eyes of many Italians, Berlusconi is still one of them—not a politician. He somehow managed to never be considered part of the political caste.” In fact, Berlusconi has stayed in power for so long precisely because many Italians believe he is one of them, a leader who says what the voting majority of Italians are thinking. (When he complimented Barack Obama on his “suntan,” for instance, he was echoing a casual racism that is evident across Italy.)

Italians often use the word furbo—crafty—to describe Berlusconi. Maria Latella, magazine editor and anchorwoman on Italy’s Sky 24 news network, is the personal biographer of Berlusconi’s second ex-wife, Veronica Lario. She toldNewsweek that many Italians admire that trait most. Only the wily get ahead, she says, and many Italians believe, through Berlusconi’s example, that the system of using personal connections, friendships, and being cunning is the only one that works. “Berlusconi was the solid evidence of this conviction. He made it because he was always a little more crafty than the others,” she explained. “He stayed so long because he was useful—especially to many Italians, like those who don’t pay taxes. Maybe Italians will miss the illusion of thinking that there is always a way to solve things. They will soon have to realize that sometimes being crafty doesn’t help.”

Chicanery clearly did help Berlusconi maintain a high approval rating despite decades of squalid headlines. Few politicians could get away with the type of tawdry scandals Berlusconi survives with such aplomb. He turns every sex scandal into a sexual feat with a wink and a nudge, and each criminal investigation is yet more proof of what’s wrong with Italy’s left-wing-led judiciary. He was the alternative to the status quo back in 1994; now he defines it. “Berlusconi is a historical figure irrespective of his many failures,” said Andrea Mandel-Mantello, head of the Italian-American investment bank AdviCorp. “He changed the way politics were made in Italy. He made fabulous promises that gave hope to a lot of Italians who believed in the future of an Italy that would be run by such a successful entrepreneur instead of a politician.”

Berlusconi has been embattled—and emboldened—by a string of sex scandals that began with his attendance at the 18th birthday party of a Neapolitan underwear model and continued with charges that he paid a 17-year-old Moroccan exotic dancer for sex. His response? Brazen. He told his supporters last month that he was going to resurrect his defunct “Forza Italia,” or Go Italy, political party and call it “Forza Gnocca,” or “Pussy Power.” The comment may play well to a certain strain of Italian men, but it should be lost on no one that Italy is a country that treats most women as second-class citizens. Italy ranked 74th in the World Economic Forum’s 2010 Global Gender Gap Report, behind Cuba and Venezuela. The report shows that closing the gender gap would boost the euro zone’s GDP by as much as 13 percent, but again Italy wins for worst performance in gender equality. Italy ranked 87th worldwide in labor participation, 121st in wage parity, 97th in opportunity for women to take leadership roles. The report concluded, “Italy continues to be one of the lowest-ranking countries in the EU and deteriorated further over the last year.”
The author Severgnini says Italians have been accomplices to Berlusconi, in large part because his vast media interests play a role in shaping consensus in the country. In Italy, television is divided evenly between state and private licenses. Berlusconi‘s Mediaset owns 45 percent of the private television channels. As prime minister, he indirectly controlled a further 50 percent through state TV. Berlusconi did not handpick programming on state television, but he did choose the board of directors who do. “Mr. B. reflects an eternal Italy of well-worn pickup lines, endless erotic stimulation, and sincere compliments,” says Severgnini. “The man says into the microphone exactly what millions of Italian males say at the bar. It’s not off-putting, because when the powerful are outrageous it sounds like spontaneity.”
For years Berlusconi has been saying no one can replace him, and in many ways he’s right. He has created a complicated Italy in which he is the only person with the skill set to navigate the landscape. Many of his laws were tailored to his needs, from the one that got him reelected to the various immunity laws that keep him from criminal prosecution. Now even his staunch supporters have had to let him go. Bill Emmott, a former editor of The Economist and author of Forza, Italia, argues that “his basic promise was to do no harm to his voters, not to raise their taxes or take away their rights and privileges. So it is fitting that the end of his third prime ministership has come because pleasure is no longer an option and optimism has come to look like denial or delusion. Without him in office, those Italians who liked him as a kind of pleasure drug to help them avoid facing reality will now have withdrawal symptoms. Reality has finally intervened.”

In leaving office, Berlusconi will have to pay a price for his antics. He will lose the partial immunity from prosecution that he gave himself. Had he been able to save the economy or institute desperately needed reforms, he may have lasted until his mandate ended in 2013. As it was, he got greedy. “Berlusconi never lost popularity among a very vast section of the Italian population,” says Mandel-Mantello. “He was just never able to translate that popularity into action.”

Severgnini believes Italy will be just fine without their entertaining leader. “I do not think Italians will miss Berlusconi. Remember, we’re an operatic society. We cheer the tenor until the very moment we boo him off the stage.” With the curtain falling on the Berlusconi show, Italians will soon find out if the next act is better or worse.

Barbie Latza Nadeau, author of the Beast Book Angel Face, about Amanda Knox, has reported from Italy for Newsweek since 1997 and for The Daily Beast since 2009. She is a frequent contributor to CNN Traveller, Departures, Discovery, and Grazia. She appears regularly on CNN, the BBC, and NPR.

domenica 20 novembre 2011

Titelbild

DER SPIEGEL 29/2011

18.07.2011

November 12th 2011

Europe

U.S.
As Silvio Berlusconi stepped down from power in Italy, protesters altered our European edition's cover so the word "FAIL" appeared on the ousted Prime Minister's face instead of the TIME logo. In response, we decided to take a look at other times throughout history when our cover has been altered because, as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

And Watch for the Door when You Leave: A Personal Farewell to Berlusconi

TIME

By JEFF ISRAELY
Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011

The four-story palazzo in Rome would become infamous in 2007 when it emerged as one of the prime locations for Silvio Berlusconi's over-the-top parties with young women, hangers-on and at least one professed high-priced prostitute who took photos and secretly recorded conversations with the 70-something Prime Minister.

But four years earlier, I found myself at that same private residence, Palazzo Grazioli, to interview Berlusconi — over lunch. I was working on a story for TIME on how he'd dropped badly in the polls, but my host was rather buoyant after having wrapped up playing host to his self-declared "friend" President George W. Bush, who had been on a three-day visit to Rome. Berlusconi began the hour-long lunch of pasta al pomodoro and Super Tuscan wine by showing me the gift Bush had given to him: sheet music for American standards. Berlusconi even hummed a few bars of "Ol' Man River." That detail would make it into the magazine story. Dessert would not.(See photos of Silvio Berlusconi and the politics of sex.)

We closed our simple but intimate meal with some delicious homemade pistachio ice cream before the waiter served a large porcelain bowl of fresh cherries. The Prime Minister politely offered some to his guest and staffers, one by one. All politely refused. So Berlusconi started on the cherries himself, peeking into the bowl like an emperor to pluck out the choicest of the crop. With the search for each new cherry, he pulled the bowl closer and closer until his left arm was all but wrapped around it. Even back then, the scene struck me as the perfect vision of some not-quite-holy Roman indulgence.

That day is just one memory I find flooding back now that his reign is over. Is it really? For those of us whose stake in Italy extends beyond a week's holiday in Capri or someone's favorite hunk of Parmigiano, we're all still asking if Berlusconi is truly, finally out of our lives.

I married into Italy in January 1998, six months after meeting Monica, a Rome native, when we were both living in Northern California. When we decided to begin our life together in her native city, I knew I'd be doing some fast learning. My famiglia Italiana, in the strict sense, was bound to be a beautiful thing. But there was that would-be member of the extended family settling in down at Palazzo Grazioli. And Berlusconi was destined, for the next decade, to be around every corner, to come up in every conversation, appear on every channel. He was going to enter our lives, get into our heads, shape the future that awaits our children.(See whether Mario Monti can save Italy.)

For the family of foreign correspondents in Rome, he was also going to provide some great copy. Even before it descended into leadership-by-orgy, the Berlusconi reign featured a steady diet of scandal and surprises and pure star power. There were his fights against corruption charges, his control of the private television network, his foot-in-la-bocca episodes as well as a constant, more subtle eroding of civility and faith in the nation's leaders.

He didn't invent Italy's penchant for explaining away conflicts of interest; he was hardly alone in seeing public service as private enterprise by other means; but it was Berlusconi who dominated an era when bad national habits got worse, a fat national debt got fatter, and the most beautiful parts of Italy were also looking disturbingly backward, while other parts of the world were full steam ahead.

All Italians should pause for a moment now to ask what they did or didn't do to contribute to this poisonous political longevity. His sticking around, his omnipresence, was the worst of all sins. We should all share the blame. Life in Italy can be uniquely beautiful and Italians have a vibrant instinct for creativity and, what may surprise many foreigners, a prodigious work ethic. The problem is that those powers of imagination and 12-hour workdays are often devoted to keeping things stuck in place. That is in part how Italy ended up with him for 18 years. My own mea culpa is easy: I secretly enjoyed covering him a bit too much, for a bit too long. I suspect a lot of journalists did.

But Monica and I moved on to Paris for work. And from there, I had a sinking feeling that Italy isn't a great place these days for our kids to grow up. As a father, I just wanted him to go away as fast as possible.(See the top 10 Berlusconi gaffes.)

And so the news of the end came to me, at 9:56 p.m. Europe time, sent from Rome by a member of my extended Italian family, Zio Jacopo. His text message was simple: "It's done. He resigned." This American father of two Roman kids didn't hesitate with a reply: "Viva l'Italia!"


Israely, TIME's Rome bureau chief from 2001 to '08, is co-founder of the global news site Worldcrunch.com and is working on a book about Italy


http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2099453,00.html


Silvio Berlusconi Ciao


The Economist

Nov 10th 2011, 17:51 by The Economist online

Il cavaliere's career told through Economist covers

THE ECONOMIST first put Silvio Berlusconi on the cover in 2001, when we ran an investigative story looking at his business dealings. Ten years and several libel suits later, he is standing down.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2011/11/silvio-berlusconi

Bunga-bunga ‘fixer’ says Berlusconi was victim of women

Sunday Times

Sabina Began, who has been charged with aiding and abetting prostitution, says the ex-Italian PM made a mistake by bringing women into politics

John Follain, Rome Published: 20 November 2011

A model who organised a dinner for Silvio Berlusconi, her former lover, and the Hollywood star George Clooney has said the biggest mistake made by the ousted Italian prime minister was to give political posts to his women friends.

Prosecutors have charged Sabina Began, 38, a Bosnian actress and model, and seven others with aiding and abetting prostitution by bringing at least 30 showgirls and escorts to parties at Berlusconi’s residences. Began, nicknamed the “Queen Bee” of his inner circle, denies the charge.

The private life of Berlusconi, the 75-year-old billionaire who was forced from office a week ago, will come under renewed scrutiny tomorrow at the start of a trial in Milan in which three other acquaintances are also accused of supplying paid women guests for his erotic “bunga-bunga” parties.

Asked about Berlusconi’s legacy, Began, who has his initials tattooed on her right ankle, said he did “beautiful things, lots of things against the mafia”. But she added: “His biggest mistake was bringing women into politics.

“Italians haven’t forgiven him: these women were interested only in glitterati parties, they’d had plastic surgery on their breasts, faces and lips and that’s the wrong image for women in politics.

“Berlusconi was gullible, he believed women had something more than men. I think he was a victim of women who captivated him [and] he was a bit careless.”

Berlusconi gave political opportunities to several women. Mara Carfagna, a former television starlet, became his equal opportunities minister. Nicole Minetti, a former showgirl, became a Milan councillor. She will stand trial tomorrow alongside Emilio Fede, a newscaster, and Lele Mora, a showbusiness agent.

Began said she was still in love with Berlusconi, whom she met in 2005 at his luxury villa on Sardinia’s Emerald Coast. She has said of their first night: “He was romantic, it was a marvellous night.”

Began and her co-defendants have been charged with supplying prostitutes to Berlusconi in the hope of gaining jobs, contracts or favours. The accused include Giampaolo Tarantini, a businessman and convicted cocaine dealer.

The investigation has focused on the women Began brought to a dinner at Berlusconi’s Rome residence in September 2008 at which Clooney wanted to lobby him over the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region.

“I’m clean, I don’t do this thing [pimping]. There was a dinner with Clooney and 10 men, I called this friend [Tarantini] and I asked him to bring some women. I said I wanted women who could sing and dance,” Began said.

Leaked telephone intercepts reveal that Began said to Tarantini: “I’ll pay for everything, bring me girls, I beg you.”

Clooney told Time magazine that Berlusconi had taken him to see his bedroom and the bed that Vladimir Putin had given him. “It became a very different evening than anyone thought,” said Clooney.

“I was, like: I have to go. And he was saying: no, where are you going, there’s going to be a party. And I was, like: no, I gotta go, I really do.”