A strategy (of sorts) for Silvio Berlusconi: keep calm and carry on

Source: The Times

Richard Owen

Two months after Silvio Berlusconi set off the worst crisis in his political career by attending the 18th birthday party of an aspiring model in a Naples suburb, his team has finally come up with a defence strategy.

This week Mr Berlusconi, instead of losing his temper and attacking “the press, plotters and Communists”, appeared serene and jaunty. He claimed that Italians “like me the way I am”. If “the wrong kind of guests” had attended his parties, it was because they took advantage of his generosity as a host.

The other tactic is to muddy the waters by claiming that the Left is also guilty of sleazy behaviour. Yesterday Il Giornale, owned by Mr Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, devoted pages to allegations that aides to Massimo D’Alema, the former centre-left Prime Minister, were supplied with prostitutes in exchange for favours in the award of public contracts when he was in office a decade ago.

The publication’s other target was Lorenzo Cesa, a Christian Democratic leader, who it claimed had past links to a “madam” who had organised “red-light parties” involving drugs.

Will it work? Mr Berlusconi seems to think so: on Monday he is to put forward his programme for the forthcoming G8 summit at a press conference in — of all places — Naples, where the scandal surrounding him was triggered after the Letizia birthday party.

But he has left it too late: failure to do more than react helplessly to a daily barrage of revelations has left his team in state of siege. “We are reaching the point where it is no longer possible to go on like this,” said La Stampa.

The economy continues to decline, with Mario Draghi, head of the Bank of Italy, mooted by some as a possible caretaker prime minister, accusing the Government this week of having no “credible exit strategy” from recession.

A Bill laying down fines for the clients of prostitutes — devised by Mara Carfagna, the former topless model who is Minister for Equal Opportunities — has been postponed because of embarrassment over a remark by Mr Berlusconi’s lawyer that to be the “end user” of prostitutes was not a crime.

Even the right-wing newspaper Libero yesterday described this as an “own goal”.

Mr Berlusconi increasingly leaves Gianni Letta, his chief lieutenant, to stand in for him publicly, blaming crippling arthritis of the neck, for which he has cortisone injections.

Health could be an excuse to bow out — but Mr Berlusconi is not the resigning kind. He will preside at the G8, hoping that it will restore his image as a statesman. But the headlines will be as much about him as the world agenda, and the pressure on him to step down is likely to continue into the autumn.

“From the start Berlusconi has been incapable of distinguishing between public and private,” says Beppe Severgnini, author of La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind. “He is now paying the price.”