Italy: Berlusconi’s follies are dead serious

The constitutional court overturned a law that gave Berlusconi legal immunity, and he is now charged with tax fraud, corruption, and abuse of power.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is now “fighting for his political life,” said Stefano Folli in Il Sole 24 Ore. After the constitutional court last month overturned a law that gave him legal immunity, prosecutors swamped the billionaire media tycoon with charges of tax fraud, corruption, and abuse of power. The most serious case, of course, is the charge that the 74-year-old Berlusconi paid Moroccan pole-dancer Karima el Mahroug—aka Ruby the Heartstealer—for sex while she was still a minor and then used his influence to free her from police custody when she was arrested for shoplifting. This week, the prime minister’s strategy to stay out of jail became clear: “Resist. Resist as long as possible, relying on a parliamentary majority that has no desire to be challenged with an early election.” He has already launched an effort to restore his immunity. He also wants to restrict the courtroom use of telephone wiretaps, which would eliminate most of the evidence against him in the corruption cases.

Berlusconi is simply obsessed with girls, said Juan Manuel de Prada in Spain’s ABC. He must have watched too many of those Italian sex comedies “that were all the rage in the 1970s, full of schoolgirls in miniskirts and short, balding men spying on them through keyholes.” Only the “rashness of someone who is thinking with his nether regions” can explain his idiotic decision to pressure police to release an immigrant caught shoplifting. And the story he concocted to do so! He told them that Ruby was the granddaughter of Egypt’s then President Hosni Mubarak, and that her arrest would cause a diplomatic incident.

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