Italy’s politics should receive a great deal more attention than mainstream Western media, particularly until a few months ago, gave it. Unless you’ve been living in a parallel universe, you’re likely to have heard about the scandals involving hiring ‘escorts’ for parties in his villa in Sardinia, and even in the Prime Minister’s palace in Rome – and you’ve almost certainly heard of his (twice-repeated) ‘gaffe’ of calling President Obama and his wife “tanned”. You might think that since the latest summer scandals there might be rather more serious media engagement with Italian politics, and on the face of it you’d be right. Newspapers and magazines across the ‘Western’ world have been covering those more ‘menial’ scandals, his sexism and his racism, as well as outlining ‘Why Berlusconi is Unfit to lead Italy’, as the Economist famously titled a few years ago, by remarking on bribery, corruption allegations, and issues of media freedom. All of this is certainly important, and should be more than plenty to force him to step down. But it hasn’t. He’s still there. In fact, just the other day he declared he wouldn’t leave office even if he were found guilty. But in certain key respects, the kind of coverage whichmore or less openly despairs of the way these crazy Italians do politics oreven openly assumes Italians don’t care or even like Berlusconi because they’reculturally different – what I like to call ‘the pizza politics assumption’, but Edward Said more elegantly called it Orientalism – has been badly missing the point. What all these scandals should lead us – particularly academics and journalists – to ask is not ‘Why doesn’t he step down?’ (aka: ‘How can Italians put up with this?’) but rather ‘How does he manage to stay in power?’. The most serious aspect which his political resilience in the face of all these stories of scandal, media manipulation, of disregard for the law, for the Constitution, and for the most elementary standards of truth and civility in politics and so on reveal is that there is a political system, an entire way of organizing the political sphere which allows him to stay in power. The real question should be: how does this system work? For an ‘ex-pat’ like me, it’s frustrating to watch the Western media hold pretty much all the pieces of the jigsaw and not ask the obvious question: how does it all work?

I know I started my contribution to The Weave by telling John that sex scandals are not what I think is important about contemporary Italian politics and that they’re not really what I want to cover in my blogging here, but I want to use the latest ‘sex-flavoured’ scandal to make this point about Italy’s public life. The sexual part of the scandal – for once – doesn’t actually involve Berlusconi, but rather the (now former) Governor of the Lazio Region Piero Marrazzo, from the centre-left opposition. It turns out that a video was made of him associating with a transsexual prostitute, also apparently showing evidence of cocaine use. When news of the video was publicized, Marrazzo resigned. I suppose that his resignation in itself – in a country where politicians neverresign for anything, least of all the Prime Minister – should be good news. Andthe story at this point looks pretty straightforward. However, thanks to thelittle truly investigative journalism left in Italy, we can dig a little deeper, and it quickly becomes obvious that the affair isn’t so simple.

To illustrate why, let me humor you – or at least myself – with a loosely ‘Socratic’ dialogue…

Dear Friend, let us converse on the subject of Governor Marrazzo and the ‘transtape’, so that we may reflect on the nature of politics in Italy, that noblest of countries!

Let us indeed, for it is an instructive question! But, my good friend, I must respectfully differ with you and claim that today Italy does not live up to the nobility of its forebears, and I shall defend this claim by the actions by its leaders!

Well then, let us see! We know a video exists which purports to show Marrazzo with atranssexual prostitute, but do we know when and how was this video made?

The video was made on July 3^rd, after a drug pusher along with four Carabinieri – one of Italy’s police forces, technically a military organization– broke into a flat with Marrazzo and the transsexual prostitute in it.

But theymust have had a warrant, surely they must have suspected him of a crime! Thecountry which gave us Roman Law must surely value legality above all!

No, and no (and thrice no): neither sexual preferences nor private consumption of cocaine are illegal in Italy (in fact, it seems the cops may have placed the cocaine there themselves), and in any case the Carabinieri didn’t have a warrant (..and no, neither did the pusher). So much so that the Carabinieri were later allarrested and are now under trial.

By the gods! So, what were they doing in the apartment?

Good question: according to the accusations now made by their colleagues who arrested them and by public prosecutors, they broke in precisely to make the video so that they could make a video for the purposes of blackmailing Gov. Marrazzo.

They blackmailed him? The police??

Sort of.

…Huh?

They made a video for the purposes of blackmailing him.

And the difference is…?

After breaking in (breaking and entering), they ransacked the place (illegal searches) and having shot it, and having forced him to sign cheques made out tothem (extortion) and taken a few thousand euros he had on him (theft), theytried to sell the video to the media.

…The cops???

Yep.

So: bent cops –ok, very bent cops. That’s too bad, but what’s this got to do with Berlusconi or with blackmail?

Well, sit tight, because this is where it starts getting interesting…

Within a week, through his lawyer, the pusher gets in touch with the pro-Berlusconi newspaper Libero, directed by Vittorio Feltri, who has since found a job directing Il Giornale, which is owned by Berlusconi’s brother.But it’s pretty obvious – not least to anyone watching the video – that thevideo itself is body of evidence, and that it is therefore unpublishabe: anyoneacquiring the video and not passing it on to the authorities would be receivingstolen goods. On July 15^th, the pusher meets two Libero journalists, who view the video, and tell Feltri. For a start, the moment this happens, Feltri and the two journalists are breaking the law: they’re ‘receiving stolen goods’ (the video and knowledge thereof).

…still nothing on Berlusconi though…

True, but a little patience brings great rewards.

The pusher dies, but through the well-known Milan-based Foto Masi agency which his lawyer had contacted the video lives on, as do the attempts to sell it to the media,including tabloid magazines Oggi and Chi. The editors of both refuse to buy the video, but thelatter, one Alfonso Signorini, reports the video’s existence and contents tothe magazine’s editor, Marina Berlusconi, the daughter of the Prime Minister who is also owner of the holding groups the magazines belongs to (Rizzoli and Mondadori).

Ok, so Berlusconi’s daughter knows. But there’s still no proof Berlusconi himself is involved.

Well, I don’t know about you, but it would appear plausible that a daughter would tell her father of such a politically explosive fact – particularly so soon before Gov. Marrazzo’s party’s primary elections. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

…so young, and already so cynical!

Perhaps –but come, let us finish the story and then make up our minds! Ten days earlier, on October 5^th, Alfonso Signorini – Libero’s freshly-appointed editor, formerly editor of Chi and Sorrisie Canzoni, owned by Berlusconi’s Mondadori group – declare an interest in acquiring the video, and the very same day Signorini himself says in a phone call that the (supposedly rival) Mondadori-owned magazine Panorama is also interested in buying the video. By the way, Libero is owned by Gianpaolo Angelucci whose family is a major private healthcare contractor in Lazio facing cutbacks from the regional government, and whose father, Antonio, is a Senator in Berlusconi’s PDL party.

Yegads! All these people! I’m getting a headache!

…Here, have an aspirin….

Anyway, the interesting part comes on October 19^th, because Berlusconi (PM Berlusconi, this time) calls Gov. Marrazzo and tells him he’s seen the video. It’s Berlusconi himself who admits this in a book soon to be published byfriendly state-television journalist Bruno Vespa, claiming that “as soon as Isaw the video, I grabbed the phone and called Gov. Marrazzo. I told him thatthere was a video on the market which could damage him, I gave him the number of the agency which had offered the video, and he gratefully thanked me.” Thevery same day, Signorini (editor of a magazine Berlusconi doesn’t own) calls Carmen Masi, director of the Foto Masi agency, to tell her that Marrazzo will call her to try to buy back the video, thus saving his political career and family life (assuming, since you think I’m so cynical, that no copies have been made!). And indeed, Gov. Marrazzo calls Carmen Masi on the number the Berlusconi gives him. But unless Signorini is related to Nostradamus, how could he have known Marrazzo would call, save if Berlusconi himself had told him?

…Signorini might be related to Nostradamus?

No, look, you’re missing the point: the point is that on October 19^th, by his own admission, Berlusconi himself becomes the latest in a long line of people who have viewed the video and who, by omitting notifying the police, inpractice aided and abetted this long series of crimes, starting with receiving stolen goods!

Berlusconi said this?

Yep.

And has he been indicted for that?

Not yet.

So, how does the story end?

Well, fearing that the video – the evidence so many crimes had been committed – mightbe destroyed if Marrazzo bought it, the ‘good cops’, also Carabinieri,intervene on October 20^th – the day after Berlusconi’s phone call – by arresting the four ‘bad cops’ and taking the video into evidence. At which point the fact that the video existed became public knowledge, and Governor Marrazzo has to resign.

Around the same time as Marrazzo’s party’s primaries?

Yep. Politically intriguing, huh?

…I feel faint…

Once more unto the breach my friend: bare with me for one more thing!

...And what’s that?

Two articles from the Italian Criminal Code.

Only two?

Only two.

Promise?

Cross my heart!

Oh, ok then…

That’s the spirit!

But I need a break first. Preferably some food…fancy pizza?

Your choice of repast is indeed jocular…But yes, let us reconvene once you have recovered.

[part 2 to follow shortly...] 

[...here]