Four more years
ON OCTOBER 26th, Italy’s former prime minister was found guilty of tax fraud. There was nothing new in this. He has been convicted three times before. But the Italian legal system is lenient (and it was made even more lenient by Mr Berlusconi’s government). Each time, his convictions—if not overturned on appeal—were ‘timed out’ by a statute of limitations.
On this occasion, Mr Berlusconi was given four years in jail. But (speaking of leniency) three were immediately knocked off by a retrospective 2006 amnesty. And there is scant chance the 76 year-old billionaire politician will serve what is left of his sentence.
Under Italian law, he has the right to two appeals before his conviction can be enforced. The appeals could take years to hear and it is a safe bet that before they have been completed, probably at the end of 2013 or the start of 2014, the whole process will be rendered futile by the time limits.
Yet, despite all this, and the fact that Mr Berlusconi had confirmed only two days earlier that he did not intend standing for prime minister in the next general election, his conviction made the front pages of news web sites as far away as Buenos Aires. Notwithstanding terrible violence in Afghanistan and Syria on Friday, both the BBC and Die Welt chose to give the top slot to Mr Berlusconi’s legal setback.
There is more to this than journalistic nostalgia for a leader who was nothing if not newsworthy. It reflects an increasingly sharp difference between internal and external perceptions of what is happening in Italy.
For months now, Italians have been consigning Mr Berlusconi and his works, if not to history, then to irrelevance. At first, he seemed not to realise what was happening. In June, appalled by the decline in support for his party, the People of Freedom (PdL), he drew the conclusion that it was because it no longer had the benefit of his undoubted charisma (last year, after losing his majority in parliament and stepping down as prime minister, Mr Berlusconi gave up the leadership of the PdL). He implied—indeed, all but announced—that he was coming back to take over the reins.
But his party’s ratings in the opinion polls continued stubbornly to fall. And in recent weeks it has looked as if a decline could be turning into a plunge: in several recent surveys, the PdL has garnered less support than the Five Star Movement of the comedian and blogger, Beppe Grillo.
The old Berlusconi magic is just not working. And his announcement on October 24th that he was standing aside marked a reluctant acceptance of something that has long since been clear to most of his fellow-Italians: that his long ascendancy over the public life of his country is at an end.
It does not, however, mean his courtroom woes are also at an end. Or that they will fail to increase the problems facing the PdL. Mr Berlusconi is a defendant in three other trials. By far the most discomforting is one in Milan in which he is accused of paying for sex with an underage girl and then covering up the alleged offence by taking improper advantage of his position as prime minister. For the ever-smiling tycoon, as for his party, the worst may yet be to come.
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