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Berlusconi again

Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire who combines the coarse end of show-business and the ruthless end of business, has won the Italian prime ministership for the third time in 14 years. Disproving doubters and surviving a challenge from a strongly led centre-left Democratic Party, the Freedom Folk alliance between Mr. Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Umberto Bossi’s hard-right Northern League has won 168 seats in the 315-seat Senate and therefore, under Italian ele ctoral law, an automatic 340 seats in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies. Pre-election polls, banned in the final campaign fortnight, showed clear but insufficient advances by Walter Veltroni’s Democratic Party. So Mr. Berlusconi gets away with it again. He has always used his three TV stations to promote himself and his causes. During his 2001-2006 term, he put through legislation ensuring that he would not be liable for some of the many offences alleged against him, including financial crimes, corruption, and interference with the criminal process. Charges on other offences were time-barred. Electoral laws that Mr. Berlusconi called ‘rubbish’ were passed. His opponents will rue the Romano Prodi government’s failure to push through a bill curbing the many conflicts of interest that Mr. Berlusconi ignores.

Mr. Berlusconi’s alliance is poised to take Italy’s 63rd post-war government through a full five-year term — only the second time this will happen post-war. He led the first government to achieve that feat, but his untypically restrained post-election style indicates that he knows that many challenges lie ahead. Italy is predicted to have the worst Eurozone growth rate, 0.3 per cent; inequalities between the country’s northern and southern regions are increasing rapidly; and the state of the infrastructure is appalling for a developed country. Organised crime, which Mr. Berlusconi has never tackled, is big business, and is politically influential on the right. Others are also watching. The institutions of the European Union were furious about his last budget deficit, 4.4 per cent of GDP, which in turn pointed the finger at spending that brought no identifiable returns. Italy’s political culture is a problem in itself. One reason the centre-left governing coalition collapsed was that Prime Minister Prodi made some progress in cracking down on tax fraud and raising certain taxes. More disturbingly, the openly xenophobic Northern League keeps Mr. Berlusconi in office. Italians are deeply unhappy about their political culture. His social-democratic opponents will look out for early opportunities to stage a political come-back by addressing the wider issues and exploiting his many weaknesses.

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