Italy: An immunity law tailor-made for Berlusconi

“The Wizard of Milan has made himself invulnerable,” said Giuseppe d’Avanzo in Rome’s La Repubblica. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has successfully pushed through a law granting Italy’s four top leaders—himself, the president, and the speakers of both houses of parliament—immunity from prosecution while they are in office. Three of those officials aren’t affected by the law, as they have not been accused of any crimes. But Berlusconi benefits greatly, as the statute puts on hold several current trials in which he is a defendant, having been accused of bribery and corruption in dealings involving his many media holdings. To most of us, it looks as if the head of government has “manipulated the law to protect his personal interest.” Berlusconi, though, claims the trials are just attacks by politically motivated judges who are out to get him. He needs immunity, he says, in order to serve the Italian people.

Berlusconi actually has a point, said Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times. “The purpose of immunity is not to give elected officials a free ride. It is to protect the right of electorates to be ruled by the person they chose democratically.” It’s hard to determine whether the charges against Berlusconi “arise from a disinterested quest for justice or from a desire on the part of a certain branch of the Italian elite to overturn a popular choice they do not like.” Just think of the many investigations that hounded President Bill Clinton, at least some of which were certainly motivated by politics and prevented him from governing effectively. An immunity law for sitting leaders will not “threaten democracy,” as opponents contend. After all, Spain, France, and the E.U. already have such laws for their leaders, and their democracies continue to flourish.

But Italy is different, said Barbara Spinelli in Turin’s La Stampa. We have had so many precarious, short-lived governments in our history that we tend to give a strong one, such as Berlusconi’s current large parliamentary majority, too much leeway. We “equate a solid majority with stability,” the Holy Grail of Italian politics, so we let the majority trample the rights of the minority. We suffer from the erroneous “conviction that the popular mandate is everything, and that whoever embodies it is immune from sanctions.” That conviction leads to tyranny—the tyranny of the majority. The new law puts Italy squarely on that path.

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Still, it could have been worse, said Vittorio Grevi in the Milan Corriere della Sera. Berlusconi was pushing a second bill, even more far-reaching than the first, which would have automatically placed on hold all trials involving nonviolent offenses until trials for serious crimes such as murder and rape were completed. The ostensible purpose was to clear up an appalling backlog of criminal cases, but the result would have been to give white-collar criminals plenty of extra time to prepare their defenses while enjoying the fruits of their criminality. That law would have affected tens of thousands of people. Compared with such a travesty, the law that actually passed, giving Berlusconi and three other officials limited immunity, must be seen as “the lesser evil.”