Italy braced for the rise and rise of the laughing Cavaliere
HE WAS in his element. From the beaming smile and trademark doublebreasted suit to the chutzpah and manof-the-people schtick, it was as if time had stood still.
There was one difference. Silvio Berlusconi, now 81, has a lot more hair now than he did back in 2001.
The former prime minister appeared on a television chat show this week to sign an accord with “the Italian people”. He pledged that if his centre-Right alliance wins the election on March 4, he will work to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in a country where the unemployment rate is around 11 per cent and three times that among people in their 20s.
It was a deliberate echo of a near identical pledge he made on the same television programme, in front of the same presenter, and at the same desk, 17 years ago, when he promised to create a million jobs. That failed to materialise once he was in office.
The years have passed and Mr Berlusconi has lost none of his charisma and ability to speak of the hopes and fears of ordinary Italians. His stunt in the TV studio was only the latest step in his extraordinary political resurrection and rehabilitation. He was compelled to resign as prime minister in 2011 amid Italy’s chronic debt crisis and stuttering economy.
He was also mired in lurid accounts of young starlets stripping at bacchanalian “bunga bunga” parties in Sardinia and Milan.
He cannot become prime minister – a ban on public office, the result of a 2013 tax fraud conviction, has put paid to that. But he will be kingmaker if, as is likely, the Right fails to win an outright majority and has to do a deal to form a government.
He has turned a weak political position – polling suggests his party will win just 16 per cent of the vote – into a strong hand by forging an alliance with three other centre-Right parties: the League, Brothers of Italy and We Back Italy. According to polls published on Friday, they will win 37 per cent of the vote.
So why do many Italians have confidence in Il Cavaliere, or The Knight, as he is nicknamed? The answer, in part, is because there is no real alternative. The governing centre-Left Democratic Party is in disarray, torn by internal feuding and the imperious manner of Matteo Renzi, its leader and former prime minister, who resigned in December 2016 after losing a referendum on constitutional reform.
Many feel Mr Renzi had his chance and blew it. His attempts to kick-start the economy produced modest results and it was under his watch 600,000 migrants were brought to Italy’s shores, causing resentment and social tension. In a letter to Espresso, a respected news magazine, a disgruntled Left-wing voter wrote: “I’ve found that when Berlusconi appears on the TV, I don’t change channel anymore, but listen to him. And I realise that he almost hypnotises me. There’s that friendly smile, those moderate tones. It’s like listening to an old friend.”
The anti-establishment Five Star Movement, the third big political force contesting the election, is viewed with suspicion, its credibility damaged by its failure to tackle chronic public transport and rubbish collection problems, and by an expenses scandal. And Luigi di Maio, 31, Five Star’s candidate for prime minister, is a political novice whom Mr Berlusconi this week derided as “a boy” with no experience. Polls suggest a third of voters have yet to make up their minds on who to vote for. Giovanni, who runs a bicycle repair shop in central Rome, said: “I think the Five Star Movement are basically honest, but they lack experience. Berlusconi is not honest, but he has experience.”
Mr Berlusconi may be regarded as a clown abroad, but many Italians warm to his charisma and smutty jokes, including off-colour gags about bidets, oral sex and African migrants in Libya. “He makes you laugh,” said Francesco, the owner of a fruit and vegetable stall in Campo de’ Fiori. “He may not be entirely credible but he tells you things you want to hear.”
He is certainly a master of the national mood. Migration and security have dominated a campaign brought into sharp relief when an Italian with fascist sympathies shot six African migrants in Macerata in revenge for the murder of an 18-year-old woman, allegedly by Nigerian drug dealers. Despite the sometimes alarmist talk, Mr Berlusconi casts himself as a moderate who can temper the more extreme policies of the League and its anti-Muslim, anti-EU and anti-euro rhetoric. Moderates – particularly in Brussels – hope Mr Berlusconi, pro-EU and pro euro, comes out on top. The outside world may draw parallels between his behaviour and that of sexual predators such as Harvey Weinstein, but Italians don’t see it that way. Unlike Weinstein, Mr Berlusconi has never been accused of forcing himself on a woman.
Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, a teen beauty queen who went to a party in Mr Berlusconi’s Milan home in 2010, was shocked by what she saw and asked to leave. She was driven home. When she encountered Weinstein years later, she alleges he groped her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.
Silvio Berlusconi’s political reemergence may astound some. But he’s back – and it looks like he’s here to stay.
‘He makes you laugh. He may not be entirely credible but he tells you things you want to hear’
‘Five Star are honest but they lack experience. Berlusconi is not honest, but has experience’