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By Bennett Voyles
PARIS: Just a few weeks after Muammar Gaddafi went down fighting, another of the world’s wackiest leaders appears to be on his way out. In the end, it wasn’t bribery, cavorting with teenage prostitutes, or any of the other scandals in which Silvio Berlusconi has been implicated that ended the political life of the Italian premier.
Not even the three charges, two for corruption and one for fraud, on which he was convicted and is now appealing could topple the man the Italians call Il Cavaliere (the knight).
What got him, finally, was debt. When yields on Italian sovereign debt hit 7.5% this week, the Prime Minister’s allies finally turned on their long-time leader. Now he’s pledged to step down, as soon as the Parliament passes some emergency economic legislation.
True, Berlusconi didn’t run up deficits with the kind of enthusiasm you might expect of Italy’s number one party animal. But a debt, after all, is just money you’ve promised to repay, and in a way, the bond markets are foreclosing on an old IOU, a promise he made to clean up the government in the election that first brought him to power back in 1994.
Now, as Italy looks poised to return to the revolving door politics that preceded him, the country has had 61 governments since the Republic was established in 1946, it’s worth reflecting on how a Milan billionaire with no political experience managed to get elected and then go on to become the country’s third-longest serving leader in modern Italian history, after Giovanni Giolitti and Benito Mussolini.
It’s easy to chalk up Berlusconi as an Italian eccentricity, and there is an element of truth in that. Corruption and decadence were practically invented in ancient Rome, and the modern Italians are also famously tolerant.
In some countries, voters would shrug off stories of Berlusconi’s wild “bunga bunga” parties. Other places wouldn’t mind his vulgar antics, such as calling President Obama “that guy with a tan” or taking an official photo with the Spanish foreign minister while making a hand sign of horns behind his head (a schoolboy sign that he’s a cuckold).
And in too many countries, corruption is considered par for the course. It takes a special nation to put up with all of Berlusconi’s antics for the better part of two decades. However, there are also a few important lessons for citizens of any democracy where money buys too much and votes buy too little.
First Lesson: Dissatisfaction is easy to subvert
As an American, I take it for granted that financial power and a bit of name recognition can be exchanged for political power, becoming a mayor or a governor or a senator seems almost just another thing that tycoons do, like marrying a model or buying a ball club, but in Europe it’s still somewhat unusual. When it comes to politics, the European rich tend to outsource.
Berlusconi, however, wasn’t held back by custom. Ever the entrepreneur, he seems to have seen politics as just another market opportunity. Certainly, when asked about how he decided to get into politics, Berlusconi, who owns AC Milan and likes sports metaphors, says it’s because he saw an opening in the midfield.
Disgusted by the exposure of widespread corruption among the country’s economic and business elite in the early 90s, many people sought an alternative to the traditional parties, and Berlusconi delivered, in the form of a new centre-right party he formed in December 1993.
A consummate salesman, Silvio Berlusconi always had a knack for giving people what they wanted. A middle-class Milan boy whose first job out of school was singing on a cruise boat, he somehow charmed his way into business. After taking a law degree, he became a real estate developer.
In the late 1960s, his correct guess that there would be a strong demand for apartments outside Milan made him rich, and in the late 1970s, understanding that the public wanted not just public television stations but the kind of junk channels other countries had, led him to found Italy’s first private TV network, and it made him powerful.
Now, in the 1994 elections, his instincts turned out to be right once more. Forza Italia (Forward Italy) swept into power as part of a coalition government in March 1994, only three months after its founding, with Berlusconi, who had never held political office before, as its head.
That coalition lasted only seven months, but he stayed an important figure in the Opposition until 2001, when his coalition took control once more, a position he has held ever since, except for a hiatus between 2006 and 2008. But somehow, through all that time, he never got around to the housecleaning he promised.
Second Lesson: Media ownership matters
Throughout his political career, Berlusconi has owned three of the four private television networks, and while in office, has reportedly been able to influence the state networks as well. Add some newspaper and magazine ownership on top of that and he has been able to effectively set a lot of the agenda, not just with news that shows him in a favourable light, but by keeping the channels filled with cartoons, old movies, and game shows.
Today, the importance of that advantage may have deteriorated as the popularity of the Internet has grown. However, new media may have its own special risks. It’s easy to imagine someone learning to use popular Internet services in a way that suppresses opposition.
Indeed, dissidents have ended up in jail in China because Yahoo! decided to share their customers’ email accounts with the authorities. This past spring, when North Africa exploded, Facebook also showed itself not entirely comfortable with people using their accounts for political activism rather than posting pictures of their pets.
Third Lesson: Laws must be enforced
A few years ago, Berlusconi estimated that over the previous 20 years he had made 2,500 court appearances and spent $200 million in legal fees. Now, with his three convictions still being appealed and charges stemming from his liaison with a 17-year-old prostitute still pending, that tally is probably still climbing.
But more extraordinary than what he has been convicted of is what he has gotten away with, through such extraordinary measures as pushing through acts of Parliament to shorten the statute of limitations, which got him out of a conviction for bribing a judge, or changing the law so it no longer applies to the facts of his case.
An Italian friend of mine who is going through some legal wrangling of his own right now, says people have a deep distrust in the authorities and in the law. “People make their own law. And who has more power, more lawyers, more leverages, usually gets his/her way (his usually, Italy being a macho country), regardless of whether he is right or wrong,” he wrote me in an email the other day.
Of course, this isn’t only an Italian phenomenon. Roy Cohn, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hatchet man and a defence attorney for a number of US politicians and mafia bosses, is supposed to have said, “Don’t tell me what the law is, tell me who the judge is.”
What is to your advantage?
In the end, all that can keep another Berlusconi from bullying his way into power, or even worse in some ways, a whole class of corrupt ministers, is the law. But in Italy at least, the law may not be up to the job. My friend’s current legal troubles may be an illustration of the environment, and make it clear why a Berlusconi can stay in power for so long.
His latest film, which follows the filming of a feature produced by an important producer in the Italian cinema, has been accepted at a major film festival. But if the producer has his way, it will never be shown, at least in its present form. A power in the Italian film world with past ties to Berlusconi, the producer worries that it shows him in a bad light.
Now, for the past few months, my friend says he’s been receiving calls and letters trying to discourage him from distributing his film. Sometimes they are pleas, sometimes they are threats, but they keep on coming every day. Finally, a few weeks ago, he talked to two lawyers, one Dutch and one Italian, about what he should do.
“In a nutshell: Dutch lawyer says: ‘You have a case, you operated in good faith, it’s your word [with tons of witnesses and e-mails to back it] against his...The Neapolitan lawyer says: ‘non ti conviene’, which means ‘it is not in your advantage to assert yourself’, you should sit down, find a compromise, cut what you need to cut and be able to work in your country and sell your film and make money.”
“I am not sure if my silly story fits with what you are about to write. I do feel like I have entered the dark ages though, where who decides is not the law, but the pressure of lawyers. And a lot of my friends in Italy are scared for me, and even the tough ones have told me: ‘maybe you should bow down and come to a compromise’, not because I am in the wrong, but because ‘non ti conviene’.
In the end, Italy’s problem was perhaps not so much Berlusconi as the fact that the whole political and judicial system could be manipulated by him and people like him, and perhaps most of all, that to the individual, a demand for justice almost always seems ‘non ti conviene.’ In his case, my friend is now leaning against the expedient choice. Whether Italy will is another question.
(The author, formerly with the Economist Intelligence Unit, is a frequent contributor to Knowledge@Wharton and the ParisTech Review)
PARIS: Just a few weeks after Muammar Gaddafi went down fighting, another of the world’s wackiest leaders appears to be on his way out. In the end, it wasn’t bribery, cavorting with teenage prostitutes, or any of the other scandals in which Silvio Berlusconi has been implicated that ended the political life of the Italian premier.
Not even the three charges, two for corruption and one for fraud, on which he was convicted and is now appealing could topple the man the Italians call Il Cavaliere (the knight).
What got him, finally, was debt. When yields on Italian sovereign debt hit 7.5% this week, the Prime Minister’s allies finally turned on their long-time leader. Now he’s pledged to step down, as soon as the Parliament passes some emergency economic legislation.
True, Berlusconi didn’t run up deficits with the kind of enthusiasm you might expect of Italy’s number one party animal. But a debt, after all, is just money you’ve promised to repay, and in a way, the bond markets are foreclosing on an old IOU, a promise he made to clean up the government in the election that first brought him to power back in 1994.
Now, as Italy looks poised to return to the revolving door politics that preceded him, the country has had 61 governments since the Republic was established in 1946, it’s worth reflecting on how a Milan billionaire with no political experience managed to get elected and then go on to become the country’s third-longest serving leader in modern Italian history, after Giovanni Giolitti and Benito Mussolini.
It’s easy to chalk up Berlusconi as an Italian eccentricity, and there is an element of truth in that. Corruption and decadence were practically invented in ancient Rome, and the modern Italians are also famously tolerant.
In some countries, voters would shrug off stories of Berlusconi’s wild “bunga bunga” parties. Other places wouldn’t mind his vulgar antics, such as calling President Obama “that guy with a tan” or taking an official photo with the Spanish foreign minister while making a hand sign of horns behind his head (a schoolboy sign that he’s a cuckold).
And in too many countries, corruption is considered par for the course. It takes a special nation to put up with all of Berlusconi’s antics for the better part of two decades. However, there are also a few important lessons for citizens of any democracy where money buys too much and votes buy too little.
First Lesson: Dissatisfaction is easy to subvert
As an American, I take it for granted that financial power and a bit of name recognition can be exchanged for political power, becoming a mayor or a governor or a senator seems almost just another thing that tycoons do, like marrying a model or buying a ball club, but in Europe it’s still somewhat unusual. When it comes to politics, the European rich tend to outsource.
Berlusconi, however, wasn’t held back by custom. Ever the entrepreneur, he seems to have seen politics as just another market opportunity. Certainly, when asked about how he decided to get into politics, Berlusconi, who owns AC Milan and likes sports metaphors, says it’s because he saw an opening in the midfield.
Disgusted by the exposure of widespread corruption among the country’s economic and business elite in the early 90s, many people sought an alternative to the traditional parties, and Berlusconi delivered, in the form of a new centre-right party he formed in December 1993.
A consummate salesman, Silvio Berlusconi always had a knack for giving people what they wanted. A middle-class Milan boy whose first job out of school was singing on a cruise boat, he somehow charmed his way into business. After taking a law degree, he became a real estate developer.
In the late 1960s, his correct guess that there would be a strong demand for apartments outside Milan made him rich, and in the late 1970s, understanding that the public wanted not just public television stations but the kind of junk channels other countries had, led him to found Italy’s first private TV network, and it made him powerful.
Now, in the 1994 elections, his instincts turned out to be right once more. Forza Italia (Forward Italy) swept into power as part of a coalition government in March 1994, only three months after its founding, with Berlusconi, who had never held political office before, as its head.
That coalition lasted only seven months, but he stayed an important figure in the Opposition until 2001, when his coalition took control once more, a position he has held ever since, except for a hiatus between 2006 and 2008. But somehow, through all that time, he never got around to the housecleaning he promised.
Second Lesson: Media ownership matters
Throughout his political career, Berlusconi has owned three of the four private television networks, and while in office, has reportedly been able to influence the state networks as well. Add some newspaper and magazine ownership on top of that and he has been able to effectively set a lot of the agenda, not just with news that shows him in a favourable light, but by keeping the channels filled with cartoons, old movies, and game shows.
Today, the importance of that advantage may have deteriorated as the popularity of the Internet has grown. However, new media may have its own special risks. It’s easy to imagine someone learning to use popular Internet services in a way that suppresses opposition.
Indeed, dissidents have ended up in jail in China because Yahoo! decided to share their customers’ email accounts with the authorities. This past spring, when North Africa exploded, Facebook also showed itself not entirely comfortable with people using their accounts for political activism rather than posting pictures of their pets.
Third Lesson: Laws must be enforced
A few years ago, Berlusconi estimated that over the previous 20 years he had made 2,500 court appearances and spent $200 million in legal fees. Now, with his three convictions still being appealed and charges stemming from his liaison with a 17-year-old prostitute still pending, that tally is probably still climbing.
But more extraordinary than what he has been convicted of is what he has gotten away with, through such extraordinary measures as pushing through acts of Parliament to shorten the statute of limitations, which got him out of a conviction for bribing a judge, or changing the law so it no longer applies to the facts of his case.
An Italian friend of mine who is going through some legal wrangling of his own right now, says people have a deep distrust in the authorities and in the law. “People make their own law. And who has more power, more lawyers, more leverages, usually gets his/her way (his usually, Italy being a macho country), regardless of whether he is right or wrong,” he wrote me in an email the other day.
Of course, this isn’t only an Italian phenomenon. Roy Cohn, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hatchet man and a defence attorney for a number of US politicians and mafia bosses, is supposed to have said, “Don’t tell me what the law is, tell me who the judge is.”
What is to your advantage?
In the end, all that can keep another Berlusconi from bullying his way into power, or even worse in some ways, a whole class of corrupt ministers, is the law. But in Italy at least, the law may not be up to the job. My friend’s current legal troubles may be an illustration of the environment, and make it clear why a Berlusconi can stay in power for so long.
His latest film, which follows the filming of a feature produced by an important producer in the Italian cinema, has been accepted at a major film festival. But if the producer has his way, it will never be shown, at least in its present form. A power in the Italian film world with past ties to Berlusconi, the producer worries that it shows him in a bad light.
Now, for the past few months, my friend says he’s been receiving calls and letters trying to discourage him from distributing his film. Sometimes they are pleas, sometimes they are threats, but they keep on coming every day. Finally, a few weeks ago, he talked to two lawyers, one Dutch and one Italian, about what he should do.
“In a nutshell: Dutch lawyer says: ‘You have a case, you operated in good faith, it’s your word [with tons of witnesses and e-mails to back it] against his...The Neapolitan lawyer says: ‘non ti conviene’, which means ‘it is not in your advantage to assert yourself’, you should sit down, find a compromise, cut what you need to cut and be able to work in your country and sell your film and make money.”
“I am not sure if my silly story fits with what you are about to write. I do feel like I have entered the dark ages though, where who decides is not the law, but the pressure of lawyers. And a lot of my friends in Italy are scared for me, and even the tough ones have told me: ‘maybe you should bow down and come to a compromise’, not because I am in the wrong, but because ‘non ti conviene’.
In the end, Italy’s problem was perhaps not so much Berlusconi as the fact that the whole political and judicial system could be manipulated by him and people like him, and perhaps most of all, that to the individual, a demand for justice almost always seems ‘non ti conviene.’ In his case, my friend is now leaning against the expedient choice. Whether Italy will is another question.
(The author, formerly with the Economist Intelligence Unit, is a frequent contributor to Knowledge@Wharton and the ParisTech Review)
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Subscribe to The Economic Times Prime and read the ET ePaper online.