Bellissimo articolo del TImes

[Willy]

Knight in tarnished armour faces defeat in his final joustBY BEN MACINTYREThey bank with him, buy his papers, cheer his team, but now voters are set to cut their losses with a billionaire leader who built an empire but divided the land


ON THE edge of Milan is the city that Silvio built. Far from the grit and grime of Italy’s northern commercial capital, it is an oasis of calm, an exclusive enclave of terracotta flats with sports complex, swimming pool and tinkling fountains. This large private suburb, constructed in the 1970s and now home to 10,000 Milanese, was the first building block of Silvio Berlusconi’s empire. With typical braggadocio, the young entrepreneur called it “Milano 2”. Imagine a developer calling his pet housing project Manchester 2 and you get a sense of Signor Berlusconi’s limitless self-belief.

This was never just a property investment. By buying in Milano 2 Italians were buying into the Berlusconi vision of the Italian Dream: glamorous, Americanised, expensive and artificial. With time, the citizens of Milano 2 could not only live in houses created by Silvio but they could also watch Berlusconi TV stations, read his magazines, bank at his bank, shop at his supermarket, buy the books and magazines published by his company and cheer on the football team he owned, the mighty AC Milan. Finally, when the magnate went into politics, they could vote for him. A word was invented to describe this way of life: Berlusconismo. But there was another, less shiny, side to Milano 2. When the young Signor Berlusconi announced his plan to build a smart housing estate in a muddy field it was pointed out that the planes from the airport flew directly overhead. Mysteriously the flight paths were diverted and the price of Milano 2 apartments leapt. It was never clear exactly where the cash for the project had come from; the rumours of dirty money and Mafia involvement were never proven but never went away. In the fragrant, forsythia-lined paths of Milano 2, there was something distinctly fishy. Today, after five years in power, the longest term of any postwar Italian prime minister, Signor Berlusconi is fighting for his political life. Voting begins tomorrow and ends on Monday. The last opinion polls showed his coalition trailing the Centre Left, led by Romano Prodi, the former European Commission President, by up to five percentage points. For the first time in his political career the man who glories in the nickname Il Cavaliere, the knight, seems rattled, his attempts to gain a last-minute advantage increasingly desperate. Big business has turned against him. His allies on the Right are starting to distance themselves and shares in Mediaset, the broadcasting company he controls, have started to suffer as investors anticipate his defeat. If Il Cavaliere is unseated it could mark the end of one of Italy’s most extraordinary political careers. Signor Berlusconi strode the stage in operatic style. Brash and brilliant, like all great entrepreneurs (and some of the most successful politicians) he had no time for convention. If the rules stood in the way he went around them; he said exactly what came into his head (which was often unprintable); he rewarded friends and savaged enemies. But after years of legal investigations, economic stagnation, offensive gaffes and unfulfilled promises, many Italian voters have had enough. Milano 2 remains Berlusconi bedrock but even here there is disillusionment. “I will vote for him again, of course,” said Alessandra Menotti, pushing her three-year-old son around a pond. “But I’m disappointed. He has not delivered what he promised, yet.” Before Milano 2 Signor Berlusconi, a former cruise ship crooner and vacuum cleaner salesman, was just another businessman of modest means looking for a break. The exclusive package offered to residents of Milano 2 included a dedicated cable TV channel; this became the kernel of a strategy to break the monopoly of the state broadcaster, RAI. By the 1980s Signor Berlusconi had become a pioneer of commercial television, churning out soap operas and game shows with barely clad female hosts. Critics disdained his output as “pap” but the money poured in. Today Signor Berlusconi is worth at least $12billion, making him the wealthiest man in Italy and the 37th richest in the world. Mediaset controls 63 per cent of the advertising market. His publishing company, Mondadori, produces more titles than any other in Italy. His brother controls one daily newspaper, his wife another. The burgeoning Berlusconi empire relied heavily on the Socialist Prime Minister, Bettino Craxi, so when a bribery scandal in 1993 brought yet another government down and Signor Craxi fled to avoid prosecution, the tycoon set up his own political party, a new wholly owned subsidiary of Berlusconismo. Forza Italia (a name derived from a football chant) was a triumph of marketing, reflecting his uncanny grasp of popular culture. In March 1994 he became Prime Minister despite the conflict of interest between his roles as national leader and media magnate. Seven months later he was out of office again, and under investigation for corruption, but in 2001 he was triumphantly returned to power promising “a new Italian miracle”. The Berlusconi political brand was unstoppable. So, it seemed, were the lawsuits. He has been the subject of more than 90 investigations; most recently prosecutors called for his indictment for allegedly bribing David Mills, the husband of Tessa Jowell, the Culture Minister, to give favourable testimony in a case. Other charges included money laundering, tax evasion and bribery. He was acquitted of some charges and the statute of limitations expired on others; convictions were overturned on appeal; charges of false accounting had to be dropped after they were decriminalised by his Government. Signor Berlusconi insisted that he was the victim of a vast left-wing judicial conspiracy. His arrogance was towering and theatrical. He compared himself, variously, to Churchill, Napoleon and Jesus Christ. “It’s not a superiority complex”, he once said. “It’s an objective fact. No one is as valuable as Berlusconi.”



He defied anything that stood in the way of his plans and his image — including age: when his face started to sag and his hair receded he got a facelift and hair transplants. Few politicians could give offence with the same brio as Signor Berlusconi: he compared a German MEP to a concentration camp guard, made the sign of the cuckold over a Spanish minister, and most recently accused Chinese Communists of boiling babies to make fertiliser. Last week, he described anyone who planned to vote for Signor Prodi as coglioni, a vulgarity best translated as “dickheads” To Anglo-Saxon eyes the posturing and crudity were entertaining, if faintly embarrassing. On holiday with Signor Berlusconi (then sporting a bandana after his hair transplant), Tony Blair eyed his host with wary amusement, as one might a capricious uncle likely to whip his trousers off at any moment and break into ribald song.

Italy loved Signor Berlusconi, at least initially. His charm and chutzpah enlivened the dreary greyness of Italian politics. By sheer force of personality he kept a fissile coalition intact and above all he stayed put for longer than any leader since Mussolini, in a country exhausted by 59 postwar governments. Italy might have gone on loving Signor Berlusconi, had he spent less time on his lawsuits and businesses and more on fulfilling his promises to rebuild the economy. In the past five years the economy has crumbled, the deficit has spiralled. The cost of living continues to climb and growth last year stalled at precisely zero. Signor Berlusconi came to power promising free-market reform and deregulation: little has materialised. “He is one of us, a man of the people,” a Forza Italia spokesman, Antonio Palmieri, insisted. It did not seem that way to many Italians, feeling themselves grow poorer as their Prime Minister lived like a modern Renaissance prince, jetting from one of his 14 houses to another. Guests at his private estate in Sardinia, where he maintains the largest collection of rare cacti in the world, may find themselves being serenaded by the Prime Minister himself, with a song of his own composition such as My Heart is in My Throat: “I know you may make me suffer; But I’ll never let you go; Even if I have to fight I will love you to the very end.” Even today, facing defeat at the hands of his old rival, Signor Berlusconi insists that his private polls show him ahead in the race. Given his record it would be foolish to write him off but the self-styled “Jesus Christ of politics” needs a miracle now. At the final rallies of his campaign Signor Berlusconi seemed tired and, despite the miracle of plastic surgery, closer to his age of 69. He has fought a relentlessly negative campaign, painting Signor Prodi as the mouthpiece of hardline Communists. “Are we selling fear now? Yes, because the Left makes people scared.” His last press conference before polling day was a bitter rant against his enemies in which he acknowledged the possibility of defeat for the first time. There is an unusual whiff of fear in the camp of Il Cavaliere. You can see it in his hardened smile, in his attacks on fellow industrialists and his explosive reaction to hard questioning. His heart is in his throat and, in the words of his own glutinous love song, he knows he may soon be made to suffer, however hard he fights. Milano 2, where it all began, is still a charming spot, where birdsong mingles with the trill of mobile telephones. But look more closely at the city that Silvio built 40 years ago with mysterious money: some shops are for sale; scaffolding is up and workmen are cementing over the cracks because the façade is slipping. Part of the Berlusconi dream is starting to crumble.

[Tatytaty]

La parte su Milano 2...mi fa venire i brividi..mi sa di lavaggio del cervello collettivo!!!