Full Comment's Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: It's official – Silvio Berlusconi is a dirty old man who had sex with an underage girl at his infamous bunga-bunga parties.
A court in Milan ruled this week the then-Italian prime minister had also paid the ineffably named Ruby the Heartstealer — a.k.a Karima El Mahroug, a prostitute of Moroccan origin, who was a minor at the time. In addition, he was convicted of abuse of his office for persuading police to drop theft charges against her.
The three judges (all women) jailed him for seven years and banned him for life from holding public office. This was one year more than the sentence demanded by prosecutors. They also said at least 30 of the Berlusconi witnesses had committed perjury and should be prosecuted.
It was the first time Berlusconi's private behaviour had been censored. The salacious goings-on revealed in court would sink any other politician, but the 76-year-old billionaire and his supporters denounce the verdict as a leftist conspiracy. However, no one expects him to be clapped behind bars soon — appeals in Italy take years, giving him plenty of time to dream up an escape route.
For he has other legal problems. Though Ruby and the bunga-bunga goings-on have garnered the headlines, the guilty verdict in that case is the least of Berlusconi's woes. More threatening is the Mediaset affair, in which he was convicted of tax evasion and barred from office. A final ruling by the Court of Cassation, Italy's highest court, could come as early as this fall. As the BBC's Alan Johnston notes,
[The Ruby] judgment will have no immediate, practical impact. It was only the verdict of a lower court. Appeals against it could go on for years. Even if the sentence was eventually confirmed, a man of Mr. Berlusconi's age would be extremely unlikely to go to prison for crimes like these in Italy.
Much more serious for the former PM is another case that is fast reaching a conclusion. This is an affair in which Mr. Berlusconi has been convicted of tax evasion. And if he cannot get the sentence overturned at a final appeal hearing he will be barred from holding any public office as soon as this autumn. [There] is intense speculation as to how Mr. Berlusconi will manoeuvre to counter the looming threat.
At Der Spiegel Online, Hans Jurgen Schlamp suggests some ways in which the former PM might avoid justice.
He is already applying pressure to the Italian government headed by Prime Minister Enrico Letta, a social democrat. The coalition will be finished, he says, unless Letta comes to his aid, because the prime minister will lack a majority without Berlusconi's party, the People of Freedom. If Berlusconi had his way, he would like to see the government enact a small piece of legislation tailored to his situation, of which there were several during his tenure as prime minister, which would employ legal tricks to prevent his ban from politics. But because the leftists are unlikely to support this, there is also a Plan B.
A ban on holding public office by the Court of Cassation would have to be confirmed by the Senate — the second chamber of the Italian parliament, in which Berlusconi has a seat — in a secret vote. This would provide a good opportunity for a sufficient number of leftist senators to anonymously vote "no," thereby saving Berlusconi, as the former prime minister's emissaries have intimated to the coalition partners.
James Walston, a professor at the American University of Rome, sees other possibilities for evasion. In his blog on Italian politics, he notes,
There are rumours of more desperate measures like putting pressure on President [Giorgio] Napolitano to make [Berlusconi] a life senator though it is not clear how that would be different from being an elected senator as he is at the moment. Or some sort of special immunity law also with Napolitano's complicity. Berlusconi and his supporters have until autumn to work something out.
It is of course, possible, just possible that he will take the conviction on the chin and continue leading from outside Parliament like Beppe Grillo. But somehow, I doubt it.
In a piece for Al Jazeera, Silvia Mazzini proffers an unusual explanation for Berlusconi's survival in Italian politics.
Normally, if someone is found guilty of tax fraud and sexual contact with underage women, that would mean the end of his political career and the beginning of his time in jail. Not in Italy. Even though Berlusconi's party did not win a majority of the vote in the last general and local elections, Berlusconi continues to be the single most influential man in Italian politics.
How is this possible? Peer Steinbruck, the leader of the German Social Democratic Party, thought he knew why: he called Silvio Berlusconi a clown, and Italians highly value humour. As a matter of fact, Berlusconi often expressed his desire to make people laugh and tried to make that happen as much as possible, on occasions appropriate and inappropriate alike.
compiled by Araminta Wordsworth
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