The heir to Erasmus (Elisabetta A. Villa/Getty Images)
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In the late summer of 2003, I interviewed the then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi at his Sardinian palace, along with the then editor of The Spectator, Boris Johnson. Over the course of our talk, we got the media tycoon to say that Mussolini never killed his opponents but only sent them on holiday, and that Italy’s judges were insane because they were “anthropologically different” from normal people.
The interview, understandably, caused pandemonium after it was published — as Italian media piled into Berlusconi, the fascist vilifier of the country’s heroic justice warriors. Il Cavaliere — The Knight, as Berlusconi is known — responded by telling the world that the signori inglesi had got him drunk on champagne; in reality, he had forced us to drink ice-cold lemon tea.
Berlusconi has always been a crazy and colourful figure, but outrageous as his pronouncements and behaviour have been over the years, no one would ever have accused him of being actually mad. Until now. In the latest development afflicting Italian politics, judges in Milan have ordered the four-times prime minister to undergo psychiatric tests to prove that he is not mad.
It is a move so bizarre that even many of his Left-wing critics are outraged. Writing in the Left-wing daily, Il Riformista, editor Piero Sansonetti described the ruling against Berlusconi as proof that Italy is not a democracy but a “judicial dictatorship”. Even former centre-Left prime minister Romano Prodi sided with the man who for so many years was his principal political enemy, and pronounced that it was “yet another example of Italian madness”.
The court order demanding that Berlusconi’s sanity be tested came during his ongoing trial in Milan, already in its seventh year with feasibly another five to run — by which time he will be 90. The multi-billionaire is accused of bribing a string of young women with €10 million (£8.6 million) in cash, plus cars and flats, in return for their false testimony at a previous trial on what took place at his famous “Bunga Bunga” parties in 2010; which his accusers said were sex-fuelled romps but which, according to him, were elegant dinner parties.
But, last month, after Berlusconi successfully postponed several hearings on the grounds that he was medically unfit, the prosecuting judges sought a court order to force him to undergo a medical examination, as well as a perizia psichiatrica illimitata (unlimited psychiatric assessment).
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Berlusconi was convicted of paying a minor for sex, then acquitted on appeal. He is currently on trial for bribing witnesses. The case has proceeded extremely slowly, because Berlusconi keeps being unable to attend ‘for medical reasons’. Hence the court has ordered medical examinations to check his actual medical state. For non-Italians: The Italian judicial system is extremely slow because any decision can be appealed twice before it becomes final. And, not least, because a sufficient delay triggers a statute of limitations (or in Berlusconi’s case: death), which gives the defence every reason (and many opportunities) to delay a decision ad infinitum.
Left-right distinctions matter less in Italian politics than anti-corruption v. anti-prison (to put it like that). Parties from left to right have had major problems with corruption inquiries, and politicians from left to right may have a shared, personal inteterest in not having politicians go to prison. And in having common access to the trough without having to worry about interference from judges. Samsonetti may be ex-PCI, but Il Riformista, where he is editor, is written by a combination of personalities that are ex-PCI, currently with Renzi (with moral if not legal problems of his own), or currently Forza Italia (from Berusconi’s party, that is). The declared principle of the paper is to be against imprisonment – be it for tax evasion, corruption, or collaborating with the Mafia.
The left-to-right backing for Berlusconi that Farrell reports is not a consensus, but simply the anti-justice party supporting a key member. Is Farrell ignorant of this – after 20 years in Italy – or is he, too, part of the group?
The most obvious reason for parts of the judicial system pursuing Berlusconi is that they have good reason to believe he is a corrupt criminal who has managed – with the help of other parts of the judicial system – to avoid punishment. Do you believe he is the innocent victim of a witchhunt? Was Al Capone?
No, actually, the most plausible view is that argued in the article.
And Al Capone? Another victim of a judicial witch hunt, who was done for tax evasion because they could pin nothing else on him.
What is a ‘s-x-fuelled romp’? I thought generally the some other substance fuelled thé s!x part, which encompassed the romping….Maybe it’s different in Italy, or maybe Mr.B knows something we don’t.
He may not be mad, but perhaps senile… At 85 it is not that far fetched an idea.
But that means he has been senile for about 30 years.
Joe Biden is senile and only 78.