By leaving his Forza Italia party rudderless, the death of Italy’s longest-serving premier offers a chance for the prime minister to broaden her base.
The death of the Italian Republic’s longest-serving premier, Silvio Berlusconi, marks the end of an era in the nation’s history — and an opportunity for Prime Minister Meloni.
Though Il Cavaliere was a bombastic, gaffe-prone billionaire with a problematic moral compass, he imparted a sense of stability following the collapse of Italy’s First Republic. “The touchstone of Italian politics for the last 15 years,” is how a senior diplomat advising President Obama, Elizabeth Dibble, put it in 2009.
Yet Berlusconi’s death, leaving his Forza Italia party rudderless, offers a chance for Signora Meloni to broaden her base. By appealing to lawmakers of Berlusconi’s party to join her Fratelli d’Italia, she could strengthen Italy’s conservative movement for decades to come.
Berlusconi began his political career in 1994, founding the populist Forza Italia Party. He then cobbled together a center-right coalition including free-market conservatives, nationalists, disaffected former Christian Democrats, and, unfortunately, Northern League separatists.
This motley crew won the March 1994 election. However, Berlusconi was then a neophyte, and his first government fell when he resigned in the face of allegations of wrongdoing involving his business interests.
Il Cavaliere’s unwillingness to separate his private-sector enterprises from his public sector governance would plague Berlusconi throughout his political career. Yet, all told, Berlusconi served nine years as president of Italy’s Council of Ministers — including a five-year term beginning in 2001.
Born to a middle-class family in Milan, Berlusconi prospered in the booming Italian economy of the 1960s — becoming a self-made billionaire via real estate development, television, and sports. The leading broadsheet, Corriere della Sera, regularly depicted Silvio as a diminutive robber-baron-turned-corrupt-politician — pompously attired in a pin-striped suit, a bowler hat, lifts, and a bumbershoot.
In a scathing cover story, the Economist declared the billionaire to be “unfit” to govern Italy. An article in the Guardian referred to him as “the dodgy Berlusconi,” underscoring his “famous inability to handle detail.”
The editors of Germany’s Der Spiegel labeled Berlusconi a “Godfather.” A New York Times piece in 2003 harrumphed that “the seemingly dark chapters and corners of his own history are also those of his country.”
To skewer Dominique Strauss-Kahn for allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel chambermaid, a Times Week-in-Review cartoon depicted an attorney informing Mr. Strauss-Kahn that his conduct disqualifies the former IMF chief from ascending to the presidency of France. “On the other hand,” stated the bespectacled barrister in an oblique reference to Berlusconi, “it does qualify you to be prime minister of Italy.”
Berlusconi’s “bunga-bunga” sexual escapades were indeed as outré as they were tawdry. However, it’s not what-aboutism to cite the carnal shenanigans of other prominent politicos — including Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Boris Johnson, and, of course, Donald Trump.
Yet other crises loomed for Il Cavaliere, one of which proved to be his undoing. When the Eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis threatened to undermine Italy’s solvency in 2011, Berlusconi dithered and fell from power. Some have argued that Silvio was toppled at the hands of a troika made up of jittery financial markets, outside antagonists — read Chancellor Merkel — and domestic political foes.
Berlusconi’s biggest failures were in the two areas that should have been his natural strengths: the Italian economy and national greatness. For an entrepreneur who created a vast business and media empire by harnessing the magic of Italy’s marketplace in the glory days of the mid-20th century, Berlusconi could not engender a second Italian economic miracle when he reigned from Palazzo Chigi.
Though Berlusconi raised Italy’s profile on the world stage, augmenting the Magic Boot’s peacekeeping presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, and across the Middle East, he undercut national unity by allowing the Northern League’s divisive Umberto Bossi to run roughshod over his administration.
Berlusconi’s passing at the age of 86 has generated a wave of condolences and encomiums from such disparate figures as Pope Francis, Vladimir Putin, Matteo Renzi, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and Sergio Mattarella.
Mr. Bush noted that “There was never a dull moment with Silvio. He strengthened the friendship between Italy and the United States, and we are grateful for his commitment to our important alliance.”
To President Mattarella, “Berlusconi was a great political leader who marked the history of our republic, influencing its paradigms, customs and language.” Prime Minister Blair said: “Silvio was a larger-than-life figure with whom I worked closely for several years as Prime Minister. I know he was controversial for many but for me he was a leader whom I found capable, shrewd, and, most important, true to his word.”
Ms. Meloni, who chided fellow coalition member Berlusconi for his espousal of Russia’s Putin, nevertheless called her predecessor “a great European political leader” and “a great Italian” whose “commitment transformed our nation and opened spaces for authentic liberty.”
A shrewd politician herself, Ms. Meloni is no doubt aware that without Berlusconi’s presence and ample funds, Forza Italia may wither away — posing an opportunity that she would be wise to seize. -RAI
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