LETTER FROM ROME:With the exception of just one well-aimed blow, Berlusconi has survived women and scandal intact, writes PADDY AGNEW
EVEN BY his own, never dull standards, the year 2009 was exceptionally movimentato(incident-strewn) for Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Accusations of sex orgies in his private residences, allegations he colluded with the Mafia in Sicily, a Milan court ruling that claimed he had bribed a witness, a constitutional court that rejected his self-introduced immunity legislation and, of course, his wife’s public request for a divorce were just some of the problems he met in 2009.
Yet, for all that, he remains in the saddle. Indeed, because of sympathy generated by a nasty physical assault on him by a mentally disturbed man in December, he arguably goes into 2010 in a much stronger position than any of his many opponents.
Berlusconi (73) is nothing if not a survivor. The year 2009 will long be remembered as the year when he had “woman trouble”. It began in early May when his wife, Veronica Lario, announced she was divorcing her husband, saying among other things that she no longer wanted to live with a man who “frequents minors”.
That was a reference to media reports Berlusconi had attended the 18th birthday party of a previously unknown, blond and pretty Neapolitan girl, Noemi Letizia, who cheerfully admitted she referred to the PM as papi(daddykins). Remarkable, said Mrs Berlusconi, when you consider he failed to attend the 18th birthday parties of his own children.
Mrs Berlusconi also railed against the alleged intentions of her husband’s People of Freedom Party (PDL) to run a number of glamorous young women, some from the world of showbiz, as candidates in the European elections. Mrs Berlusconi suggested her husband was “not well”, adding she had tried to alert his advisers to the problem.
Such a story would have felled many a politician, but not Berlusconi. At the European elections one month later, his PDL party (minus glamorous starlet candidates) was the biggest winner, returning 35.26 per cent of the vote.
The "women" problem, however, did not go away. Noemi Letizia's boyfriend, Gino Flaminio, told those (few) Italian media outlets willing to listen that Noemi had attended extravagant parties at Berlusconi's Sardinian residence of Villa Certosa. Within days, those accounts were substantiated by photos from the collection of Sardinian paparazzo, Antonello Zappadu, showing topless women and a naked Czech ex-prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, poolside at Villa Certosa. Berlusconi had those photos sequestered (as an invasion of privacy) in Italy, but they were later published by Spanish daily El Pais. It was rewarded with a lawsuit.
The “women” problem gathered pace in mid-June when media leaks revealed that Bari-based investigators were looking into allegations that a number of glamorous young women were offered money to attend parties at Villa Certosa and Villa Grazioli in Rome, another private residence. The Bari magistrates had stumbled on these allegations via phone taps during an investigation into healthcare clinics in Puglia.
At least four young women confirmed the media allegations. Call girl Patrizia D’Addario claimed she had spent the night of the 2008 US presidential election count, November 4th, with Berlusconi at Villa Grazioli. She even produced voice recordings and photos which, she claimed, verified her story.
Unwelcome criticism from Catholic voices such as Curia Cardinal Walter Kaspar or Catholic daily L'Avveniredid not deter the prime minister.
In April, he had won widespread approval for his decisive, interventionist handling of the L'Aquila earthquake which claimed the lives of 308 people. In July, right in the midst of the prostitution allegations, he won further praise for his handling of the G8 summit, symbolically moved to L'Aquila. The Financial Timeseven suggested the PM had trod the path leading "from playboy to statesman".
Two court judgments – one claiming he had bribed his own English lawyer, David Mills, to commit perjury back in the 1990s, and the other where the constitutional court abrogated judicial immunity legislation introduced by his own government in 2008 – seemed like mere temporary setbacks. The Mills case will more than likely fall foul of the statute of limitations, running out of time, while Berlusconi is almost certain to attempt to introduce a new form of judicial immunity, essentially for himself, in 2010.
A much more serious accusation, however, was to emerge early last month when Gaspare Spatuzza, a convicted Mafioso hit man turned state’s witness, accused him of Mafia collusion and of links to a 1993-1994 Mafia bombing campaign. Within a week, another Mafioso had refuted Spatuzza’s accusations but the bad taste remained.
Berlusconi’s year seemed to end on a particularly ugly note when Massimo Tartaglia violently assaulted him outside Milan Cathedral last month, breaking his nose and damaging two teeth.
Yet, even if the aggression shook the prime minister, prompting him to withdraw from public life for two weeks, he has showed resistance by improvising a campaign to make the most of sympathy engendered by the attack. The great survivor, 16 years into public life and three times prime minister, is still there.