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Friday, February 03, 2006

Italy's election: no laughing matter
Geoff Andrews
1 - 2 - 2006
Silvio Berlusconi hopes that an intense media blitz will help sustain him in power, but Geoff Andrews finds that Italy's comedians and artists have other ideas.
The Italian general election, now set for 9 April 2006, will be one of the most important of the last sixty years. It will also be one of the dirtiest. Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's richest man and prime minister, is currently trailing by an average 6% in opinion polls – but he is not going to vacate Palazzo Chigi without a fight. Many believe that if Il Cavaliere were to lose the election he would face a surge of legal cases brought on grounds of alleged corruption and attempts to bribe judges. In power, Berlusconi has created his own architecture of parliamentary privilege and immunity; once defeated, this protection would slip away.

This is why he has been so belligerent in his attacks on the opposition. For the last five years he has sustained a consistent tirade against Jacobin judges, subversive intellectuals and communist conspirators. The television stations he controls have removed comedians from the airwaves, and his legal teams have dished out frequent writs to authors and critics on grounds of "defamation". In December, his Casa delle Libertà (House of Liberties) coalition even rushed through changes to the electoral system, in a bid to keep his unpopular government in power. Meanwhile, with massive media resources at his disposal, he has been able to taunt the opposition, while benefiting from meticulous coverage of his own achievements.
Geoff Andrews is the author of Not a Normal Country: Italy After Berlusconi (Pluto, 2005) Also by Geoff Andrews on openDemocracy:
"Days of hope, rage and tragedy: from the summit foothills" (August 2001) "Bossi's – and Berlusconi's – last shout? "(August 2003) "Bologna's lesson for London" (August 2005) "The life and death of Pier Paolo Pasolini" (November 2005)
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A fragile opposition
Berlusconi's latest attack, launched by one of his own newspapers, both questions the capabilities of the opposition and sets a rancorous tone for the campaign weeks ahead. Il Giornale published transcripts of a telephone conversation between Piero Fassino, the leader of the Democratici di Sinistra (Left Democrats / DS), Italy's biggest opposition party, and Giovanni Consorte, chairman of Unipol, an insurance company in the control of Italy's co-operative movement. Unipol had recently been involved in a takeover controversy that had led to the resignation of Antonio Fazio, the governor of Italy's central bank, after allegations of insider trading and abuse of office. In the recorded phone conversation Fassino tells Consorte (who is currently under investigation): "So then. We're the bosses of a bank".

...Here.