The Italian PM promises his government will see out its term, but he may become a lame duck premier, writes PADDY AGNEWin Rome
THE CONTROVERSIAL ruling which yesterday saw Italy’s Constitutional Court annul legislation granting prime minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office is but the latest battle in an ongoing war between the media tycoon and sections of the Italian judiciary. Right from his famous “taking to the field” entry into politics in 1994, Mr Berlusconi has been dogged by a series of legal problems.
In November 1994, eight months after he had "taken to the field" of politics with a whirlwind March 1994 general election victory, and ironically while he was chairing an international convention on organised crime in Naples, Mr Berlusconi was served with an avviso(notification) that he was under investigation for bribery and corruption.
Furthermore, he was being investigated by the Milan-based mani pulite(clean hands) pool of magistrates whose Tangentopoli(Bribesville) investigations had basically wiped out the Christian Democrat party which, alone or in a variety of coalitions, had ruled Italy without interruption since 1948. The news was enough to prompt his senior ally, then and now, the federalist Northern League, to withdraw its support and bring down the government.
League leader Senator Umberto Bossi, who yesterday threatened to take to the streets with his popolo(supporters) if the Constitutional Court ruling went against Mr Berlusconi, was rather less charitable back in 1994. Referring to the media tycoon as "BerlusKaiser", he accused him of being a "Mafioso".
The Naples setback was the first chapter in a remarkable decade for Mr Berlusconi which saw him charged with (but not convicted of) corruption, bribery of judges and tax inspectors, tax evasion, false accounting, money laundering and illegal party financing in at least nine different, major trials. In many cases, the Statute of Limitations kicked in before judgment could be served.
A reminder of Mr Berlusconi’s legal problems emerged just last weekend when a judge awarded €750 million damages against his Fininvest group, ordering it to pay that sum to the CIR group by way of compensation for having bribed a judge to ensure that it won a battle for control of the huge publishing house Mondadori.
In 2007, Senator Cesare Previti, onetime Berlusconi family lawyer, was given a definitive 18-month sentence for having bribed appeals court judge Vittorio Metta in order to ensure a favourable judgment for Fininvest in the battle with CIR.
In his judgment last weekend, Judge Raimondo Mesiano ruled that the prime minister had been “co-responsible” for the bribery of the appeals court judge. Mr Berlusconi himself, however, had been scratched from the Mondadori trial because of the statute of limitations.
Last weekend, Mr Berlusconi responded to that judgment in the same defiant manner in which he responded yesterday, calling the judgment a “legal outrage” and saying: “I want all our opposition to know that this government will bring to completion its five year mission”.
Following yesterday’s ruling, the prime minister may find it even harder to fulfil that promise. After a long summer dominated by stories of orgies and marital breakdown, could it be that Mr Berlusconi is about to become a “lame duck” prime minister?