Silvio Berlusconi: caught between the law and Mafia

Silvio Berlusconi, master of bunga-bunga ceremonies, is in hot water again. Today magistrates in Milan will request a 'fast track' prosecution for the prime minister based on claims he hired an underage prostitute for one of his orgies and perverted the course of justice by trying to get her released after she was arrested for theft.

His spokesman continues to state that the accusations concerning Karima el-Mahroug - aka Ruby Rubacuori - are all a put-up job: a conspiracy between the parliamentary opposition, magistrates and lawyers who are communist sleepers, and the corrupt and unprincipled media (conveniently ignoring the fact that Berlusconi owns or manages more than three-quarters of Italian media outlets).

On top of the Ruby charges, the Constitutional Court has now ruled that three cases involving bribery should be 'reactivated'. These include the case involving the alleged bribery of Berlusconi's British lawyer, David Mills, former husband of the Labour Olympics minister Tessa Jowell, for giving false testimony about his tax affairs. This is due to start on March 11.

Also, the weekend brought news from one of Italy's most celebrated paparazzi that pictures of a nude Berlusconi dancing at a bunga-bunga party at his Sardinian villa are being offered for sale to gossip magazines. The photographer has alleged that the originals are now in the hands of the Naples Mafia, the Camorra.

Here the colours of Silvio Berlusconi's deliberately glitzy and stagey career begin to darken.
 
This year Italy celebrates the 150th anniversary of a crucial stage in its unification. In 1861 the Kingdom of a United Italy was declared, with its temporary capital in Florence – Rome was only taken ten years later.

In a year when the accent should be on the unity of Italy, the people and the state, the country appears once more desperately divided between the wealthy north and the impoverished south.

In the past 10 years, the north has recorded annual growth topping three per cent annually, while the south - the Mezzogiorno - has recorded figures of minus two per cent growth a year.

One of the reasons now being given openly - and by Berlusconi ministers at that - for the malaise is the burden of organised crime. Together, the four Mafias of the south are one of the biggest multinational enterprises in Europe, if not the global economy as a whole.

The Berlusconi solution has been to propose a radical measure of 'fiscal federalism' under which the tax system would be reformed to reward business in the north. It might appease his restive allies of the Northern League - a vital part of his coalition and whose votes now keep him in power – but it could lead very soon to a genuinely divided federal Italy.

The new measure passed by the slenderest  of margins, two votes, in the Lower House. The President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, a former Communist, has refused to sign it into law. He says it is improperly drawn up. Besides, such a radical new measure needs to have broader national consensus.

So why doesn't Signor Berlusconi call fresh elections, particularly as the opinion polls say he would win handsomely? Why does he appear bent on avoiding the campaign trail - which he normally does from a television studio anyway - at all costs?

The answer could lie in that story about the Mafia allegedly trading in naked pictures.

Like Giulio Andreotti before him, Berlusconi has relied heavily on electoral support from the south where – particularly in Sicily – votes are part of Mafia patronage. By suggesting the tax changes to benefit the north, he is overtly confronting the Mafia.

Popular though he may be with the viewers of the garish output of his Mediaset television companies, he appears to have created a fresh lot of powerful enemies. There is a growing sense that Berlusconi's career, like that of the veteran statesman Andreotti who was protected through many decades by the Mafia, is about to be thwarted by the Friends of Friends.

In the year when Italy should be celebrating its unity and achievement, now the second industrial economy of western Europe and fifth in the world, the country's prime minister is fast becoming the symbol of the country's disunity and dysfunction. That is why he is in trouble again, and the curtain is beginning to ring down on the long-running Berlusconi soap opera. ·