Our favourite prime minister. Time to say addio

Da: The Economist, 3.12.2009

Our favourite prime minister Time to say addio

Silvio Berlusconi’s political career is teetering on the brink. He should go.

EVEN by his standards, it has been a bad week for Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister. A court demanded surety for a huge fine on his Fininvest company, over its 2000 purchase of Mondadori, Italy’s biggest publisher. His wife, Veronica, is seeking a vast divorce settlement. His trial on charges of bribing a British lawyer, David Mills, is restarting after his immunity was quashed. New claims are being aired of one-time Mafia connections. A “No Berlusconi Day” protest is being staged in Rome this weekend. Mr Berlusconi has made political survival an art, but even he now looks to be in trouble ….

The Economist’s view of Mr Berlusconi has been consistent. We criticised his political debut in 1993-94. In 2001 we said he was unfit to rule Italy. In 2006 we advised Italian voters to say “Basta!” to his government. We urged them to back his centre-left opponent in March 2008. Yet we have been cautious over joining the extensive and prurient commentary on a lurid array of sex scandals that have engulfed the 73-year-old prime minister this year. We prefer to judge him on two more substantive matters: the conflicts of interest between his business and political jobs, and his government’s performance.

This week’s events have thrown a dark light on the first. The resumption of various court cases involving him or his associates, plus a series of other business and legal issues, are distracting him and his government from their other responsibilities. The damage is visible. With the financial crisis and the recession, attention has shifted from Italy’s economic difficulties to the plight of places like Greece. Yet although Italy’s admirable small businesses in the north are thriving, the country as a whole still lags behind badly. In the year to the third quarter its GDP shrank by more than the euro-area average, and it is expected to fall by almost 5% in 2009, as big a drop as in any other big west European country.

Mr Berlusconi’s government has been shockingly dilatory in its response. For a long time the prime minister denied that Italy would go into recession. He used the parlous public finances as a reason to justify why Italy’s fiscal stimulus should be much smaller than in other big countries. Unlike a few braver political leaders, he also failed to promote the sorts of economic reform needed to restore the country’s competitiveness, which has deteriorated sharply against Germany’s. Italy remains over-regulated and comes out distressingly badly in international league tables for such things as the ease of starting a business, the extent of corruption, the level of a country’s research spending and the quality of its education.

In his third government Mr Berlusconi has also pursued an eccentric foreign policy out of kilter with Italy’s Western allies. He has cosied up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi in pursuit of Italian energy interests (this week he was in Belarus, chatting up another dictator, Alyaksandr Lukashenka). Under Mr Berlusconi, Italy continues to punch below its weight in the European Union and the world.

Go, go, Silvio
Partly thanks to his own machinations, there is no obvious successor if Mr Berlusconi quits. Indeed, some supporters say it is better to stick with him because the alternative would be chaos. Yet Italy has other potential leaders: Gianfranco Fini in his own party, who is openly plotting to oust Mr Berlusconi; Pier Ferdinando Casini in the centre, who held aloof from his third government; even the new centre-left leader, Pierluigi Bersani, who pushed reforms in the government of Romano Prodi. One of these would surely come to the fore were Mr Berlusconi to go. Whoever does might even complete the country’s transformation, which Mr Berlusconi halted in its tracks when he entered the political stage in the 1990s. Italy would be better off if il cavaliere now rode out of the scene.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15017197

Our favourite prime minister. Time to say addioultima modifica: 2009-12-04T19:31:00+01:00da pelikan-55
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