In another time, the braggadocio of the man who likes to be called Il Cavaliere (The Knight) might amuse his neighbors. But today’s Italy is no joke. It’s Europe’s fourth largest economy, and one of 11 countries locked into the Continent’s single currency. It’s a vital NATO ally and a member of the G8, which will hold its annual summit in Genoa this July. If Berlusconi’s coalition wins Italian elections on May 13, he’ll be the host. And that makes a lot of people nervous. In fact, Il Cavaliere has come under such a torrent of criticism in the European press, some of it concerned, some of it contemptuous, that fellow magnate Gianni Agnelli felt compelled to defend him–and the country. Italy and its voters, said Agnelli, are being treated “like a banana republic.”
It’s not the first time that Berlusconi, Italy’s richest man, has been center stage. He created a party from scratch, won elections and formed a government that briefly coalesced, then crumbled, in 1994. At the time, he seemed a curiosity. Years of judicial investigations had destroyed Italy’s corruption-filled political establishment, and into the void stepped the self-made Berlusconi, who had built a TV, news and publishing empire. Could he be worse than the lot he replaced?
Europe seems to think so. Perhaps because the Continent has grown so closely knit, there is widespread consternation at the return of Berlusconi. The center-left coalition that’s dominated Parliament the past five years has been a solid European partner. Berlusconi, by contrast, seems unsavory to reporters and opinion makers all over the EU. It’s not just a matter of personality or platform. Like Berlusconi, leftist parties all over Europe claim to want lower taxes and less bureaucracy. The discomfort centers on his shady reputation and the pending investigations into his business practices–as well as the presence of several right-wing politicians in his House of Freedom coalition who spew rhetoric larded with racism and xenophobia. The French daily Le Monde felt constrained to “remind” Italian voters last week that “they are part of a community that upholds certain values that the election of Mr. Berlusconi would contradict.” Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel has described Berlusconi as “a danger to Europe,” denounced one of his allies as “fascist” and even raised the unlikely possibility that Italy could be quarantined by the Community the way Austria was when it brought right-winger Jorg Haider into government.
In the current age of centrism, when the policies of left and right often converge, Italy’s campaign has been filled with flashback references worthy of Black Shirts and red flags. Berlusconi denounces the criminal charges leveled against him as the work of “communist” judges and says his opponent, Francesco Rutelli, is just a “disguise” for the old left, a pretty face picked to head a coalition masterminded by former communist Massimo D’Alema, or “the Bolshevik,” as Berlusconi likes to call him.
The extremist tenor of the Italian campaign–as if fascists were competing against communists–only worsens the fears of Italy’s European partners. Berlusconi’s ally, Umberto Bossi of the Northern League, told the party faithful last week that they have to choose “whether they want a leftist Europe similar to the Soviet republics or whether they want a democratic Europe.” Speaking in Imperia, a town Mussolini created in 1923 to symbolize his power, the gruff-voiced Bossi suggested World War II would never have happened if Germany hadn’t “tried to change the balance” against “Anglo-Saxon” domination of the world economy. He denied he is a “fascist,” then railed against immigrants and the dangers of “homosexual marriages.”
Bossi, who formerly called for the secession of northern Italy, ought to be a marginal player. And when Berlusconi had a double-digit lead, he was. But if Berlusconi wins only a narrow victory, Bossi could end up with the power to determine the government’s survival. In 1994 Bossi walked out of the first Berlusconi government and brought it down. Now, he says, he and Berlusconi have a solid agreement that will bring the Northern League into the cabinet.
Rutelli has tried to stay away from extremes. Rather than talk about “fascism,” he warns of the dangers of “populism.” But everyone gets the message. The former mayor of Rome should have been able to run on his Olive Tree coalition’s record of the past five years. Italy met the tough criteria for joining the euro zone and saw unemployment decline from 12.3 to 9.9 percent. But the left’s own fratricide has undermined it. The coalition stayed in power, but prime ministers fell. “We were the government. He was the new approach,” says Rutelli. “We were quarreling. He was the boss.” Yet now, Rutelli claims, “Berlusconi is losing his grip.”
Berlusconi certainly is under pressure, much of it from abroad. At the moment, his only clear allies seem to be Germany’s out-of-power Christian Democratic Union. In 1999 former chancellor Helmut Kohl pushed for Berlusconi’s Forza Italia to be admitted into the club of European conservative parties, the European People’s Party, that allies Germany’s Christian Democrats and Britain’s Tories in the European Parliament. Now, the conservative CDU’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation is working closely with Berlusconi’s think tank to help “make [Forza] into a real party with a real platform,” as one German put it. Their hope is that Il Cavaliere might eventually lead a new charge against the center-left governments that dominate most European parliaments.
Right-wing opinion makers elsewhere, though, worry that Berlusconi and his team will give conservatives a bad name. Last week, Spain’s El Mundo and Britain’s The Economist, both solidly pro-business, published investigations into the criminal allegations against Berlusconi. He vehemently denies all charges, and says he has fought prosecutors to a standstill–though not acquittal–in every case. He likes to note that both times he was convicted, the convictions were overturned on appeal.
Indeed, Berlusconi constantly plays on the idea that what’s good for him personally is good for Italy, and vice versa. Attacks by the foreign press are attacks on Italy’s voters, he says. “They are questioning your judgment,” he told supporters in Milan last week. “It’s not about my actions. It is about your judgment. Your judgment,” he emphasized.
So, why would Italians choose such a man? Among the solidly middle class–and especially small- and medium-business owners–there’s a strong conviction that a businessman is more likely to cut taxes than a leftist. James Walston, a political scientist at the American University in Rome, suggests Berlusconi’s raffish reputation as a “fun-loving criminal” may also be part of his charm, in a nation with a huge black economy, where many people see tax laws as more nuisance than necessity. And the way he ignores criticism makes him look tough.
Il Cavaliere’s approach to questions about conflict of interest, for instance, are appropriately cavalier. Until the 1980s, all television in Italy was state-controlled. Berlusconi set up private networks with the benefit of specially tailored legislation. (The bills were pushed through by the late, disgraced Socialist leader Bettino Craxi.) Now government channels have 50 percent of the viewers; Berlusconi’s Mediaset channels, 41. As prime minister, he could have effective control of virtually all the country’s air time.
Last week Berlusconi promised to pass a law dealing with conflict of interest in his first 100 days in office. But he doesn’t really see why he should. As he told a group of Italian industrialists, “If I, taking care of everyone’s interests, also take care of my own, you can’t talk about a conflict of interest.”
After 58 governments since World War II and the epic corruption revelations of the “clean hands” investigations in the early 1990s, it’s easy to see why Italians have grown cynical. Academic studies suggest they’ve stopped caring what their politicians say. “What we say here is that they all speak a lot and say beautiful things,” says Giuseppe Massabo, a retired sailor who lives near Genoa, “and then they all fill their pockets.” That’s just how Italians have come to expect their politicians to behave. Europe, however, still hopes for higher standards.
