ITALY: Italians can sleep easy in their beds. They have Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's words to reassure their troubled souls. Speaking on a TV breakfast show this week, in relation to an ongoing banking scandal, the prime minister solemnly pronounced: "By definition, the prime minister cannot lie."
With a little over two months to go to Italy's general election on April 9th, Prime Minister Berlusconi has been busy doing the thing that, arguably, he does best - electioneering. In the last 10 days, the prime minister has launched himself on a media blitzkrieg that has seen him make prime-time TV and radio appearances not only on news and current affairs programmes but also on variety programmes and football chat shows.
Leaving no stone unturned, Mr Berlusconi on Wednesday morning talked for 24 minutes on the airwaves of Isoradio, the state radio reserved for information about the viability of Italy's national road system. Rather than being informed about traffic jams on the Milan ring road, listeners were told about the "40 death threats against me", as well as being reassured that "no one has ever worked as hard as me".
Leaving aside his natural affinity for TV (Mr Berlusconi is owner of a vast commercial TV empire which accounts for around 45 per cent of the national audience share), the Great Communicator may have been stirred into action by recent opinion polls suggesting his centre-right coalition is trailing the centre-left led by former European Commission president Romano Prodi by 5 per cent in the polls.
Speaking on prime-time radio yesterday morning, Mr Prodi not surprisingly suggested the media playing field may not exactly be level, saying: "In the last two weeks, Mr Berlusconi has been on radio and TV news programmes and bulletins for a total of three hours and six minutes, whilst in the same time, I've had just eight minutes. Can this be fair?"
Mr Prodi's media analysis is based on an independent survey that concluded that, since January 1st, Mr Berlusconi has been by far the dominant TV presence with regard to national political figures, claiming 48 per cent of the airwaves as opposed to a mere 2 per cent for Mr Prodi.
Mr Berlusconi's media blitz has not gone unnoticed and may well have prompted an unusually outspoken statement earlier this week from President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Addressing the parliamentary commission with responsibility for state broadcaster RAI, President Ciampi called for "real parity" during the forthcoming election, arguing that "freedom of speech and information are the very essence of that which we understand by the very word freedom".
If the president thought to put a halt to Mr Berlusconi's media gallop, he was mistaken. The prime minister has already scheduled another series of prime-time appearances for the next week.
Mr Berlusconi remains convinced that when it comes to TV, no one does it better than him. Come April 9th, his conviction will once again be put to the test.