To his supporters, the odd antics of Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi can still raise a chuckle. Comparing a German MEP to a Nazi concentration camp guard and snubbing German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder when he was the Italian premier’s guest at the opera recently have caused little concern among the rank and file of his Forza Italia party. Last week he tried to claim that Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had been beneficial for the country. Subsequent backpedaling by his spokesmen did little to assuage the outrage felt by many Italians, who recalled the destructive wars into which Mussolini led the country and his deportation of Italian Jews to Nazi death camps. Some might argue that a trend is appearing in Berlusconi’s behavior which suggests a rising contempt for political norms and a growing certainty of his own political rectitude.
The Italian premier has already behaved dubiously by using the parliamentary majority possessed by his coalition government to drive through laws that will protect him and his media empire from investigations, principally for tax fraud, that were already under way. A shiver must have gone through his political counterparts elsewhere in Europe when they saw such a blatant perversion of a country’s judicial process. He has now picked a new fight — which is to launch a libel action against the leader of Italy’s main opposition party, Piero Fassino who has accused the Italian premier of being behind a dirty-tricks campaign aimed at discrediting political opponents.
In the normal course of events, this would have passed for merely the cut and thrust of politics. In the past Italians have made political name-calling a normal practice.
Yet all of a sudden the Italian premier, rather than shrugging off the accusation as the stuff of opposition political rhetoric has chosen to turn to his country’s courts to clear his reputation. The clear danger in this is that the judiciary is being drawn into the business of lawmakers. Their independence has already been sullied by the ill-advised legislation protecting Berlusconi and his media empire from prosecution. Now they are to be asked to adjudicate on a matter which ought to have been left to the voters themselves.
The Italian premier seems prepared to seize any convenient vehicle to pursue his political ends, regardless of the long-term damage to Italy’s political system such a course of action might cause. Such a cynical use of the system has more to do with Italy’s prewar fascist politics than the workings of a modern democratic state which is currently at the heart of EU affairs. The truth for many Italian voters is that Berlusconi’s actions have long since ceased to be amusing and now border disturbingly on the megalomaniacal.
