Italy Senses Berlusconi Era Is Nearing End

By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: November 12, 2010

onhap News Agency/YNA, via European Pressphoto Agency

ROME — Italy’s center-left opposition called Friday for a confidence vote against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, ushering in a chapter that until recently seemed unthinkable: the end of the Berlusconi era.

In the past week, a steady drumbeat of dissent from within the prime minister’s own center-right coalition has crescendoed, reaching a crisis that analysts say is expected to bring down the government within weeks — and most likely result in early elections.

“The government has in effect already fallen,” said Stefano Folli, a political commentator at the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. “It could hold up until they pass the budget, but that’s a formality; on a political plane, the crisis has already begun.”

The confidence vote has not been scheduled, but analysts said it would most likely be the vehicle that would bring down the government as soon as Parliament approved the 2011 budget.

In the past week, the mood in Italy has shifted markedly from political-theater-as-usual to End of Empire.

“This is an important moment,” said Giuliano Ferrara, editor of the newspaper Il Foglio, and a longtime occasional adviser to Mr. Berlusconi. “There’s a sense that his reign is ending.” (The right-wing daily newspaper is partly owned by Mr. Berlusconi’s wife, Veronica Lario, who filed for divorce last year, adding an inheritance battle to his woes.)

The new crisis is the result of complex factors, not least that Italians have grown weary of the prime minister’s raucous private life’s appearing to distract from the country’s problems.

But it also stems from a simple political fact: Mr. Berlusconi lost his majority in Parliament in July when he expelled a key ally, Gianfranco Fini, from the coalition. Mr. Fini is a co-founder of the prime minister’s People of Liberty party and a former Fascist now seen as a moderate.

Mr. Fini, the speaker of the lower house, has recently become emboldened, sensing an opportunity to bring down Mr. Berlusconi, even if he does not have the power to replace him.

Last week, Mr. Fini repeatedly called on Mr. Berlusconi to resign, but he refused. Mr. Fini has said that he will withdraw his two ministers from the government on Monday. The instability comes at a time when world markets are particularly attentive to the euro.

If Mr. Fini does bring down the government, multiple outcomes are possible in the parliamentary system, including one in which Mr. Berlusconi could resign and form a new government without new elections.

But that is looking increasingly unlikely, given Mr. Berlusconi’s plummeting popularity. Instead, various center-right blocs are furiously making deals and courting a centrist party to form a new majority.

Since he was first elected in 1994, Mr. Berlusconi, 74, whose mandate extends to 2013, has dominated Italian public life, owing to his political savvy, popularity with voters, ability to read the national mood and a private media empire that helped shape public opinion. These helped keep him aloft through scandals and political crises that would have sunk politicians elsewhere.

But the current crisis has been precipitated by news reports that Mr. Berlusconi called a Milan police chief last May to inquire about the detention of Karima el-Mahroug, a 17-year-old dancer nicknamed Ruby Rubacuori, or Ruby Heart-Stealer, who had attended parties at his house and whom the police had arrested and accused of theft.

According to Italian media reports, Mr. Berlusconi said that the Moroccan dancer was a relative of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. While details of the episode remain hazy, critics accused Mr. Berlusconi of abuse of office.

The mood was perfectly captured on Monday, when a left-leaning channel on state-run television drew its largest audience share in years with a program in which the comedian Roberto Benigni delivered an hourlong monologue skewering Mr. Berlusconi. Mr. Benigni joked that a leading center-left politician, Rosy Bindi, 59, whom Mr. Berlusconi has repeatedly insulted, should use her feminine wiles to get ahead.

“Say you’re Zapatero’s sister-in-law,” Mr. Benigni joked of Ms. Bindi. “Fidel Castro’s grandmother.”

He also mocked Mr. Berlusconi for routinely accusing magistrates, the president and the Constitution of being left-wing. “If only the left were left-wing,” he cried.

Mr. Berlusconi still governs without a significant center-left opposition, and the center-right is still projected to win the next elections — with or without him.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 13, 2010, on page A4 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/world/europe/13italy.html?scp=2&sq=Berlusconi&st=cse

A comedy that has gone on too long

Silvio Berlusconi under pressure

He is a survivor. But if he cares about his country, Italy’s prime minister should head towards the exit quickly

Nov 4th 2010

ANOTHER week, another forecast that Silvio Berlusconi may go. Italy’s 74-year-old prime minister, first elected 16 years ago, is a famously canny fighter. A new sex scandal, more mutinous murmurs by his former allies, the threat of an early election, claims that he abused his position by telephoning the police before they released a teenage girl suspected of theft: none of these may prove enough to lever the obstinate old goat out. But there is now an unmistakable feeling in the Italian air of an era drawing to a close.

Mr Berlusconi’s defenders are blaming the newspapers, the magistrates, the foreigners and his arch-rival (and erstwhile supporter), Gianfranco Fini, for their man’s difficulties. The Milan prosecutor has decided that the police followed proper procedures in releasing the girl. But nobody can disguise the truth that Mr Berlusconi’s approval rating among voters has hit new lows, or that Mr Fini controls enough votes in the lower house to bring down the government. Even some in the prime minister’s camp are starting to wonder if he has become such a liability that he ought now to go (see article).

Oddly some of Mr Berlusconi’s longtime critics are among those fretting that this would be unwise. They support the view he expressed this week that, at a time of new bond-market jitters and jangling economic nerves, Italy would suffer “great harm” if he were ousted, because it would enter a new period of political instability. They note that, thanks partly to the skill of the finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, Italy has steered clear of the credit concerns that have engulfed other countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland. This may not be the right time, they conclude, to rock the political boat.

It is a tempting argument, but it is wrong. For the stability that Mr Berlusconi’s continuation in office offers is illusory. Every new scandal saps his authority and exposes him (and, incidentally, his country) to renewed ridicule. With Mr Fini preparing to launch a new party and the Northern League, another party in the coalition, eager for an early election, the threat of a government collapse has become perpetual. The debt markets may not be concerned about Italy right now, because it skipped the banking and property bubbles that burst elsewhere. But in the longer term the colossal size of Italy’s public debt, the pension and health-care burden arising from its ageing population and its continuing loss of competitiveness are bigger worries than the odd bust bank.

Enough of the Burlesqueoni

In truth, what Mr Berlusconi really offers is not stability but stagnation. Far from steering Italy skilfully past the many dangers that confront it, his government has become almost totally paralysed. Mr Berlusconi’s legal and other preoccupations have distracted him and his ministers from the pursuit of any of the hard reforms that are necessary to restore the economy to long-term health. Even the first triumph of his current government, trumpeted so loudly after it was formed in 2008, the clearing up of garbage in and around Naples, has proved ephemeral: the stinking piles of rubbish are back.

This newspaper opposed Mr Berlusconi from the start. Many Italians have disagreed with us, convinced that only an outsider could bring change. Now they have nothing: just an ageing Lothario clinging to power. Radical reform demands a new champion, whether from left, right or centre, to take on entrenched vested interests and push the cause.

At the end of Leoncavallo’s opera “Pagliacci”, Canio the clown steps forward, after stabbing Silvio, to tell the audience “La commedia è finita.” The curtain should now fall on the tragicomic reign of today’s Silvio, too.

http://www.economist.com/node/17416756?story_id=17416756&CFID=148214071&CFTOKEN=11902969

Pornography and politics

Rising to the occasion

Electoral victory brings a surprising consequence: the winners look at smut

Oct 28th 2010

WHEN Barack Obama won the American presidency in 2008 his supporters cheered, cried, hugged—and in many cases logged on to their computers to look at pornography. And, lest Republicans crow about the decadence of their opponents, precisely the obverse happened when their man won in 2004.

That, at least, is the conclusion of a study by Patrick Markey of Villanova University, in Pennsylvania, and his wife Charlotte, who works at Rutgers, in New Jersey. The Markeys were looking for confirmation of a phenomenon called the challenge hypothesis. This suggests that males involved in a competition will experience a rise in testosterone levels if they win, and a fall if they lose.

The challenge hypothesis was first advanced to explain the mating behaviour of monogamous birds. In these species, males’ testosterone levels increase in the spring, to promote aggression against potential rivals. When the time comes for the males to settle down and help tend their young, their testosterone falls, along with their aggressive tendencies.

Something similar has since been found to apply to fish, lizards, ring-tailed lemurs, rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees—and humans. In many of these animals, though, there is a twist. It is not just that testosterone ramps up for breeding and ramps down for nurturing. Rather, its production is sensitive to a male’s success in the breeding competition itself. In men, then, levels of the hormone rise in preparation for a challenge and go up even more if that challenge is successfully completed. Failure, by contrast, causes the level to fall.

Previous research has found these hormonal ups and downs in male wrestlers, martial artists, tennis players, chess players and even people playing a coin-flip game. In evolutionary terms, it makes sense. If a losing male continues to be aggressive, the chances are he will be seriously injured (it is unlikely natural selection could have foreseen competitive coin-tossing). Turning down his testosterone level helps ward off that risk. Conversely, the winner can afford to get really dominant, as the threat of retaliation has receded.

For most species, determining that this actually happens requires a lot of boring fieldwork. But the Markeys realised that in the case of people they could cut the tedium by asking what was going on in those parts of the web that provide a lot more traffic than their users will ever admit to, on the assumption that men fired up by testosterone have a greater appetite for pornography than those who are not.

To do this they first used a web service called WordTracker to identify the top ten search terms employed by people seeking pornography (“xvideos” was the politest among them). Then they asked a second service, Google Trends, to analyse how often those words were used in the week before and the week after an American election, broken down by state.

Their results, just published in Evolution and Human Behavior, were the same for all three of the elections they looked at—the 2004 and 2008 presidential contests, and the 2006 mid-terms (in which the Democrats made big gains in both houses of Congress). No matter which side won, searches for porn increased in states that had voted for the winners and decreased in those that had voted for the losers. The difference was not huge; it was a matter of one or two per cent. But it was consistent and statistically significant.

If the polls are right, then, next Tuesday’s mid-term elections will see red faces in the red states for those furtive surfers who are caught in the act. In the blue states, meanwhile, a fit of the blues will mean the screens stay switched off.

Science and Technology

http://www.economist.com/node/17358553?story_id=17358553

Berlusconi vulnerable to rivals

By Guy Dinmore in Rome

Published: October 12 2010

With opinion polls confirming that Silvio Berlusconi’s fractured government is losing its grip, party leaders are gearing up for possible elections next spring that could finally bring the curtain down on the billionaire prime minister’s long domination of Italian politics.

Rivals warn of underestimating his ability to bounce back – but Mr Berlusconi’s apparent vulnerability was emphasised on Tuesday when Paolo Bonaiuti, government spokesman, forcefully denied comments by Alberto Zangrillo, the prime minister’s doctor, that he was “at his limits” and needed a week’s rest after minor surgery to his wrist.

Mr Berlusconi’s ability to see out the second half of his five-year term is hostage to the conditional support of Gianfranco Fini, his long-time ally-turned-adversary. On Monday the latter told a group of reporters, including the Financial Times, that the government could soon fall over its efforts to reform the judiciary.

Mr Fini reiterated that his new party, Future and Liberty, would use its balance of power in the lower house to block what he called Mr Berlusconi’s unethical plan to cancel a backlog of thousands of pending trials, including two cases against the prime minister.

Asked if Italy was headed for elections next March, Mr Fini, speaker of the lower house, said: “I don’t know.” But he made clear he was not in a hurry to bring down the government. “We live in a tunnel where the election campaign never ends. There is a great weariness among Italians with this constant election campaign.”

He also warned Italy could ill-afford a political vacuum, struggling with debt close to 120 per cent of gross domestic product, with Greece the highest in the European Union.

Speculation focused on whether Mr Fini, a 58-year-old former neo-fascist who has undergone a long political transformation towards the middle ground, will lead an emerging alliance of centrist parties known as the “third pole”.

Mr Fini insisted that this was not his intention and that he remained committed to preserving a “bi polar” system.

Political people in talks to form a new centrist coalition say that, in the event of elections, Mr Fini would join forces with the predominantly Catholic UDC, led by Pier Ferdinando Casini, and smaller parties. Talks also involve participation of Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, head of carmaker Fiat’s Ferrari unit, who has to date denied the intention to enter politics.

Italo Bocchino, leader of Mr Fini’s faction in parliament, suggested on Tuesday that Mr Montezemolo could be an “option” as a leader of a future alliance of Mr Fini, the UDC and Sicily’s small Movement for Autonomy party formerly allied with Mr Berlusconi.

Opinion polls suggest that in spite of Mr Berlusconi’s sliding popularity, his People of Liberty party – which he co-founded with Mr Fini last year – would emerge as the single largest force in the lower house with about 29 per cent of the vote, followed by the centre-left opposition Democrats, in even greater internal disarray than the government, with some 25 per cent.

But polls suggest Mr Berlusconi would fall short in the Senate, where the as-yet hypothetical centrist alliance would hold the balance of power.

In such a scenario, political people said, Mr Fini and Mr Casini would offer to support the government but on condition that Mr Berlusconi retire from politics.

Leading the field of alternative prime ministers is Giulio Tremonti, finance minister who has strong ties with the rightwing Northern League currently allied with Mr Berlusconi.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0cb903a0-d625-11df-81f0-00144feabdc0.html

No joking matter

Oct 8th 2010, 16:32 by The Economist | ROME

PROSECUTORS are looking into whether the outspoken head of Italy’s employers’ federation was—or is—the target of an attempt by journalists close to the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to threaten her with compromising information.

Il Giornale, a newspaper owned by Mr Berlusconi’s brother which takes a consistently pro-government line, announced today that it was about to publish a “four-page dossier” on Emma Marcegaglia (pictured), the president of Confindustria, Italy's employers' association. Ms Marcegaglia has been a fierce critic of the government's failure to put forward a policy for reviving economic growth after the recession.

The paper made its move despite an inquiry, led by two Naples prosecutors, in which its editor, Alessandro Sallusti, and deputy editor, Nicola Porro, are formal suspects. According to leaks from the inquiry published in the Italian media, it centres on a text message sent by Mr Porro to a press officer at Confindustria on September 16th.

The message allegedly said "tomorrow there will be a big judicial piece on the business dealings of the Marcegaglia family". Soon afterwards, the two men spoke on the telephone, unaware their conversation was being recorded.

Mr Porro is claimed to have said: "Now we're going to have some real fun and for the next 20 days [give] Marcegaglia a hard time like she's never seen before".
He has since said he was “just joking”, and that, “We're on very familiar terms and we kid around. I never made any threats.”

The article was not published. But, questioned on October 5th, Ms Marcegaglia said that she felt her name and reputation had been put in jeopardy by Mr Porro’s remarks.

Ms Marcegaglia’s criticism of the Berlusconi government became increasingly strident in the summer as the prime minister ignored calls to appoint a new industry minister. Claudio Scajola, the previous incumbent, stepped down in May. Mr Berlusconi himself held the portfolio until earlier this month, when he named Paolo Romani to the job.

On October 7th, police searched the Milan headquarters of Il Giornale. They were also reported to have searched the homes of the two journalists under investigation. Mr Sallusti took over the day-to-day editing of the paper following criticism of its investigation into an allegedly shady property deal in Monte Carlo, which appeared to cast doubt on the probity of another prominent critic of the prime minister, his former ally, Gianfranco Fini.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2010/10/il_giornale_trouble

A Week Can be More Than Seven Days in Italy

By Liam Moloney

The Bible says it took God seven days (including one to rest) to create the world. It is taking Italy considerably longer to find a new industry minister.

At the very start of September Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he would name a new industry minister “next week,” filling what was, at the time, a four-month void.

On July 23, the premier said the new minister would be named “by the end of next week.”

When former Industry Minister Claudio Scajola stepped down on May 4 to prepare his defense amid allegations of an improper real estate deal, Berlusconi — who took over the responsibilities on an interim basis — said a few hours later he would replace him within “days.”

At a time of high unemployment — especially among the young — and companies complaining of little government support in slashing red tape and fiscal bills to better compete internationally, not having an industry minister is taking its toll.

Labor union leaders and company bosses, in a rare show of unity, have found common cause in complaining over the matter. Recently, controversy-shy Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said he will “spread the word around [for possible candidates]” for the ministerial post as a hint to the government to speed up its decision.

The lack of direction is most evident in the country’s nuclear energy drive. Berlusconi’s government energy policy centers on a nuclear energy comeback, following a 1987 referendum that banned atomic power.

The government wants construction work on the first reactor to start before the next general elections due in 2013, so has to have a facility running by 2020. It has boasted that it ultimately wants a quarter of Italy’s electricity to be generated from nuclear facilities, reducing the strong reliance on imported fossil fuels.

A bunch of energy companies rushed to the local atomic bandwagon.

The pack were led by Italian utility Enel, which set up a venture with nuclear behemothElectricite de France. The two are ready to build four EPR plants in Italy for a total cost of about €18 billion.

However, a few days ago Giancarlo Aquilanti, the main Enel official in charge of nuclear affairs, said that unless the ball starts rolling again the company won’t be able to meet the 2013 construction target.

The newly established key nuclear safety agency exists essentially only on paper as it isn’t operational and there’s nobody to head it.

Without that figure, the agency won’t issue the rules that will allow companies to be able to select sites. The new industry minister will select who will be in charge of the nuclear safety agency.

The government has just decided to postpone the list of where nuclear waste can be deposited, preferring to first have the nuclear agency up and running, meaning that thanks to the snails-pace permit approval procedure, it will be even further down the line.

It feels very much like when you end up going back to square one in board games after landing in the wrong space.

For a country that has waited more than two decades for a nuclear renaissance, a “week” might be just too long.

http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2010/09/28/a-week-can-be-more-than-seven-days-in-italy/?KEYWORDS=Berlusconi

The Truth About Italy

One of Europe's most dynamic countries deserves praise, not petty insults.

BY GIULIO TERZI | SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

(Ambassador to the United States Giulio Terzi responds to James Walston).

To put it simply, the recent article by James Walston, whose title I will avoid mentioning so as not to spread its vulgarity, is a clear example of faziosita' (factiousness). And Waltson's choice of Dante's quote may well be a Freudian slip, since Dante himself experienced the tragic and painful effects of the fight between fazioni in XIII Century Florence, being eventually banned from his native city and exiled.

Anyone has the right to express his own opinions, even when they are blatantly biased as in Waltson's case. But I am very surprised that an important publication which is dedicated to foreign policy and bears on its front page the name of its illustrious founder, Samuel P. Huntington, chooses to host such an acrimonious and false story based on domestic gossip, with a lack of balance and seriousness one could expect at the lowest levels of tabloid sensationalism.

I am even more surprised since it's on foreign policy that, over the years and in particular under the current government led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has given more and more evidence of its worldwide credibility, strong commitment, and resolve, as is proper for a founding member of the European Union and a leading country within the G8.

For coming issues of Foreign Policy, I dare suggest a few stories about Italy that may be of some interest to your readers all over the world. For an Afghan audience you might run a story about the 4,000 Italian troops helping secure the country against the Taliban threat and strengthen local communities together with the United States and other Nato allies. Your readers in Lebanon, the Balkans and in Africa will most probably be happy to see some pictures of those 7,500 Italian peacekeepers they meet every day in their towns and villages and that make Italy top contributor to U.N. missions among G8 countries. As for those in the United States who are particularly worried about the well-known effects of unregulated financial markets, it could be useful to learn more about "Lecce Framework", a set of common principles and standards for propriety, integrity and transparency proposed during the Italian G8 presidency last year, or the proposals Italy has put forward on commodity speculation for the upcoming G20 Summit in Seoul (Speaking of the economy, Waltson might want to reconsider his figures about Italy's growth and take a look at more recent public data showing an annualized rate of 1.3 percent).

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/17/the_real_italy

(after reading the ambassador's embarassing reply, please read the readers' comments, much more interesting)