WP: Though Unpopular, Berlusconi Succeeds at Undoing 'Revolution'

Though Unpopular, Berlusconi Succeeds at Undoing 'Revolution'
Italian Leader's Critics Fear Return of Corruption, Inefficiency

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 24, 2005; Page A14


ROME -- It was called the Italian Revolution. In the early 1990s, dozens of politicians and their business allies were tossed into jail by anti-corruption prosecutors. Political parties that had dominated the country's revolving-door governments for 50 years crumbled. Voters demanded -- and got -- electoral reforms designed to ensure relatively stable governments.

Less than a decade and a half later, the revolution is over. A steady counterattack over the past four years by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's wealthy and assertive prime minister, has nullified many of the laws that made such prosecutions possible. In one recent stroke, Berlusconi's coalition in Parliament this month erased electoral rules that grew out of the upheaval of the '90s and which many voters once hoped would reduce government shakiness and sleaze.

Many of Berlusconi's critics see symptoms of a reborn corrupt and inefficient state in a recent upsurge of organized crime and in scandals that have rocked the country's business sector.

Berlusconi himself has done well under the changes. He has declared that he entered politics to protect his business interests from antitrust moves and himself from prosecution for corruption. He once said: "If I, taking care of everyone's interests, also take care of my own, you can't talk about a conflict of interest."

"It is remarkable that, in serving his own interests, Berlusconi has had the effect of reversing the entire revolution," said Erik Jones, a professor of European studies at Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center. "He may be giving away big achievements for the narrowest of reasons."...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/23/AR2005102301090.html

... maybe Silvio can come be the VP in the U.S. if Cheney takes off (or just stays out of sight)! Sounds like he understands the ME game.

BH

Turning the mafia loose on innocent Italians just as the Bushies turned loose the WASP mafia on Americans?

Controlling the media is one of them.

How unfortunate for those people, being led by a corporate thief and thug--we certainly feel their pain.

They are analogous of many centuries before them as the marauding hoards that also ram-sacked other civilized societies. The people of the world as a collective will have to finally come together to remove the scourge from the body politic. It does seem interesting that so many crooks from so many cultures and countries across the globe have taken up the moniker and mantra of the corporate sirens.

Odyssey Sirens 'were monk seals'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4559217.stm