The sight of Silvio Berlusconi, the controversial Italian Prime Minister, changing the law to his own benefit has become so familiar there is a risk that Italians — and the world at large — will accept it as normal. What is at stake, however, is not normal.
In effect, critics say, he is undermining the rule of law in a Western democracy instead of upholding it.
Mr Berlusconi and his supporters have this week tabled in Parliament a Bill shortening the length of criminal trials. It is, they say, a long overdue attempt to reform Italy’s notoriously slow, cumbersome and Kafkaesque judicial system, in which verdicts arrive after years — or never.
But this hastily formulated measure derives from Mr Berlusconi’s instruction to Niccolo Ghedini, his personal lawyer — who, this being Italy, is also a parliamentary deputy framing the law — to find a way to save him from imminent corruption trials, after a ruling by the Constitutional Court last month overturning his self-awarded immunity from prosecution.
Mr Berlusconi, 73, has been conducting a battle against the judiciary since he entered politics 15 years ago. It is his unshakeable conviction that all judges, prosecutors and magistrates are “Communists” who form part of a “subversive plot” to oust him from power.
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When he remarked recently that he was “the most persecuted man in history”, many outside Italy smiled. But he meant it. Mr Berlusconi’s obsession with “Communists” seems bizarre to outsiders 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall — but not to Italians for whom the civil war between Communists and Fascists during the Second World War continues in a different form.
His populist gift for rapport with the man in the street, coupled with his control of the media, helps to explain why Mr Berlusconi has been elected three times. Many Italians accept his oft-repeated argument that he has been “chosen by the people”, and that this overrides prosecutors who want to put him on trial.
But quite apart from the fact that some Italians voted for other factions on the centre Right rather than for him personally, leaders in other Western democracies also have a popular mandate, yet still subject themselves to the rule of law. It does not occur to them to question whether a judge is politically Left or Right. The independence of the judiciary is assumed to be the bedrock of democracy.
The new law shortening trials to six years for offences carrying a sentence of ten years or under will undoubtedly pass, since Mr Berlusconi has a commanding majority in Parliament. But a proposed law restoring parliamentary immunity, abolished in 1993 in an anti-corruption drive, is unlikely to go through, since it requires a two-thirds majority.
Centre-left opposition leaders are vowing to take to the streets to protest against the Bill on shortening trials, which the National Association of Magistrates said would have a “devastating effect” on justice by letting at least 100,000 suspects off scot free. It is unclear whether President Napolitano will sign the Bill or demand changes.
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Mr Berlusconi has survived repeated corruption charges and accusations of conflict of interest since 1994, and more recently sex scandals involving showgirls and “escorts” that would have brought down any other Western leader. The Left is weak and divided, and although Mr Berlusconi has lost popularity he would still probably win if he called a snap election.
The corrosive effect of his unending battles with the law and the press is rather on himself and his increasingly fractious coalition. He is, said La Stampa today, “like a bull, alone in the ring, tormented, nervous, suffering, his nostrils foaming with rage”. According to Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by his brother Paolo, while outwardly buoyant and ebullient as ever the Prime Minister is embittered and silent behind the scenes.
He is furious with Gianfranco Fini, co-leader of the ruling People of Liberty party and his likely successor, who backed him over judicial reform but blocked a more drastic version that Mr Berlusconi had hoped would shield him from future prosecutions as well as existing ones.
It is Mr Fini, said Il Giornale, who “has the upper hand”, and is out to “bury” Mr Berlusconi. The Prime Minister may pay a long-term price as his own party weighs the impact on public opinion at home and abroad of him using his power to resolve his legal problems.
The urbane, astute and self-assured Mr Fini, who has made a remarkable journey from neo-Fascism to mainstream conservatism as Speaker of the Lower House, offers a deliberately distinct and alternative style of leadership. At 57, he is clearly waiting for his time to come.