Berlusconi’s leadership is a tragedy for Italians, although the inconvenient truth of the matter is that so many of them voted for him, said The Observer (UK) in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
That should serve as a warning to other Western European countries that think their democratic culture is so entrenched as to be immune from internal threat. If that is the great paradox of democracy, the greatest cliche in politics is that nations get the leaders they deserve. But surely Italy and Europe deserve better than Silvio Berlusconi.
In government, he has proposed draconian racial profiling, fingerprinting Roma children and threatening to take those who beg on Italian streets away from their parents, a measure seen by leaders of other minorities as a throwback to Italy’s fascist past. Berlusconi has also returned to a favorite legislative theme — protecting himself from the various corruption charges that have accrued against him over the years. He wants to pass a law that would make the holders of top public offices, naturally including his own, immune from prosecution. When he tried to introduce the same measure in 2004, the supreme court ruled that it was unconstitutional. He has another law pending which would suspend for one year certain trials where the alleged crime carries a sentence longer than 10 years. One such case, due to start next month, involves allegations of bribery against Berlusconi. This agenda is little short of all-out war against a judiciary and those sections of the media determined to hold him to account. (The prime minister has substantial control over commercial television and uses his office to influence the state broadcaster.)
The judges who pursue him, he says, are “a cancer in our democracy”. It has all been conducted in Berlusconi’s trademark brazen, flamboyant manner that, were it not so sinister, would be reminiscent of a circus ringmaster.
