Silvio Berlusconi: The politics of ‘bunga bunga’

When will Italians stop excusing the “sleazy behavior” of our leader? asked Italian journalist Maria Laura Rodota in the London Observer. It was bad enough that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi allegedly intervened in official police business to order the dropping of theft charges against a 17-year-old belly dancer. But the tale told by the girl, who goes by the stage name Ruby Rubacuori, is even worse. She says Berlusconi, 74, invited her to his villa for “bunga bunga,” an “erotic ritual”—purportedly learned from Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi—involving many naked young women dancing around and fawning over one man. Faced with the accusations, the prime minister’s response has been flippant, even offensive. “It’s better to have a passion for beautiful girls than to be gay,” he said. This overdone, blustery machismo is getting old. It’s time to ask ourselves: “What other country in the world would allow him to stay in office?”

“Here we go again,” said Maurizio Belpietro in Rome’s Libero. The prime minister’s enemies have been trying to bring him down for years by hyping ordinary flirtations as sex scandals. In 2008, they tapped his phone and caught him promising to help young women get jobs at his TV stations in exchange for their attentions. Last year, there was the revelation that he had given a pricey necklace to an 18-year-old. And now there’s the “Ruby affair.” Honestly, why should we care? Italy has known for decades that Berlusconi tends to be “uninhibited in the presence of a skirt.” Even if everything Ruby said about bunga bunga is true, it didn’t involve underage sex, just a parade of girls “with high hopes and lovely bodies.” Yet now, even his former political allies are calling for Berlusconi to step down. Surely it’s not worth bringing down the government over a wild party.

The prime minister has brought the work of government to a screeching halt, said Giuseppe D’Avanzo in Rome’s La Repubblica. Berlusconi is refusing to speak to Parliament because it wants to ask him about an alarming “accessibility to the prime minister’s residences,” where “prostitutes come and go at will,” and state personnel are employed to ferry them around. It’s understandable for Berlusconi to want to duck such embarrassing questions. But it’s also illegal—he can’t simply refuse to talk to the legislature. Parliament also needs his input on questions of vital security to the nation, such as “what is happening with our soldiers in Afghanistan” and “what is the current terrorist threat level?” In focusing on his private affairs, Berlusconi endangers the public good.

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Worse, he’s making Italy a laughingstock, said Sergio Romano in Milan’s Corriere della Sera. His personal behavior plays into “all the trite prejudices about Italians” as womanizers more interested in seeking pleasure than conducting serious business. The Berlusconi government has done many good things—fiscal and education reform and the fight against organized crime. But at this point, our best option may be early elections. “Italians deserve better.”