Tarnished Armor

By Frederick Painton

The ingredients of a full-blown political crisis were gathering last week over Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's fragile coalition government. But none was more threatening than the challenge directed at Berlusconi personally, the tycoon who had been swept into power earlier this year on a tide of anticorruption sentiment. Even as he was host to a U.N. conference in Naples on combatting organized crime, the Prime Minister, once dubbed Il Cavaliere, or the knight, found himself among the knaves as he was formally placed under investigation by magistrates engaged in a bribery probe of Fininvest, his business empire.

"I have never corrupted anyone," was Berlusconi's indignant response to the accusations, which he claimed were part of a campaign aimed at his conservative government by leftist magistrates. The Prime Minister contended that his companies never attempted bribery but were victims of corrupt tax inspectors who had extorted money in exchange for favorable tax audits. Although the judicial notification implied no guilt, Berlusconi found himself directly caught up in the debate over the apparent conflict of interest between being Prime Minister and holding onto control of Fininvest, a $7 billion-a-year conglomerate that dominates the Italian media. Belatedly, the Prime Minister said he was ready to make a public offering of a majority of shares in his three television channels.

Key political players weighed the risks of a Berlusconi fall eight months after national elections had decimated Italy's traditional political parties. If new elections were held, no one could be sure how voters would react. In first-round municipal balloting two weeks ago, Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia, dropped from its 30% share last June to only 12%, largely because of public resentment against his drive to shrink the bloated welfare state by reforming government pensions. During his run for the Prime Minister's job, Berlusconi had promised a new economic miracle in which a million new jobs would be created; now he was threatening to give Italy its first serious postwar dose of austerity.

Berlusconi was not ready to concede. If any of the five parties in his government switched allegiance, he said, it would be "a Judas," and he would ask for new elections; he would make no deals "over the heads of the electorate." He had the agreement of President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who warned party leaders against forging the kind of Byzantine deals that produced paralytic governments in the past and distorted the voters' expressed will.

Analysts speculated about at least two scenarios. The first was the simplest. Within the coming week, the budget bill, which has passed the Chamber of Deputies, goes before the Senate, where the Berlusconi government lacks a majority. If the bill is defeated, the Prime Minister may carry out his threat to resign and force new elections. If it passes, coalition partner Umberto Bossi, head of the Northern League, may resign or switch allegiance to protest against Berlusconi's leadership.

Should Berlusconi go, the country may wind up with what Italians call a "constituent" government of national unity: representation by all parties and a nonpartisan Prime Minister who would draft a new constitution. Then elections would be called. That was how democracy returned to Italy after World War II. It would be a good way to start all over, a new beginning that Italy desperately needs.

With reporting by Nicola Lombardo/Milan