Can Italy's 'King Silvio' survive on chutzpah alone?
Jul 03, 2009
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"There is a sudden stench of decay coming off the court of King Silvio," says Peter Popham in The Independent. While the core of intimates of Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, remain faithful, on the fringes the stories about the 72-year-old cavorting with young women are "beginning to do him palpable damage".
Two Catholic newspapers and three senior churchmen have questioned his behaviour publicly; in Italy, the emergence of hostile noises from this quarter bodes ill for him. The "hitherto omnipotent billionaire politician is losing his gloss", agrees Paola Totaro in The Age. The foreign media have had a field day, but it's the hostility closer to home that's most corrosive. His "Teflon coating" may not survive the assault.
Don't count on it, says Tobias Jones in The Sunday Telegraph. To most of us Berlusconi's political survival is extraordinary: he has emerged from accusations of perjury, perverting the course of justice, tax evasion and corrupting public officials. But there is a "moral chasm" between Italy and the rest of the world.
Voters see him as simple man who loves money and sex, with the added bonus of "chutzpah and charisma and cunning". "If anything there's envy of, and admiration for, his harem." Should he survive this latest scandal, his stock will rise yet higher.
The reality is that Berlusconi's "burlesque behaviour" is a sideshow. It may distract voters from their economic woes for now, but it won't last, says Rachel Sanderson on Breakingviews. The OECD expects Italy's GDP to shrink by 5.5% this year, while government debt, already proportionately Europe's largest, will grow to 120% of GDP in 2010. The only way for Italy to gain an export edge is to bring down labour costs, but Berlusconi has refused to grasp this "political nettle" and has instead been encouraging Italians to keep shopping. Italy is now "on the road to cripplingly high taxation, making a bad economic situation worse," as Italians will inevitably discover.
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