It was only in 2003 that The Economist sent an open letter to Berlusconi, asking about the measures his government took to block all judicial investigations about Berlusconi’s muddy business past. It was only 2005 when Viva Zapatero, a film by the italian comedian Sabina Guzzanti, depicting the serious breeches to freedom of speech happened during Berlusconi’s spell, received a ten minutes standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. It was only in 2006 that a feature film on a corrupted politician owning some TV networks (!), “Il Caimano” (The Caiman) was awarded at Cannes. It was just last November when Enzo Biagi, one of the main italian journalists for 40 years, died, and many remembered how he had been banned from Italian television from 2002 to 2006 after poking fun on how Berlusconi’s business interests conflicted with his political views. Only some weeks ago, when a precarious worker, a girl, asked to Berlusconi at a press conference to suggest a solution, he answered “you should marry a rich man, like my son”.
Now, against, all reasoning, the Joker is back.
Maybe the problem isn’t Berlusconi, who is obviously unfit to lead anything but his business (which he attends to with great care); maybe the problem is Italy, whose lack of training in Democracy made it unfit to be led (see Italy, the ungovernable nation and related articles). This is so depressing.
Here is a link to an article in several languages, prefaced by one of Italy’s foremost intellectuals Gianni Vattimo, has been distributed by the latter before Berlusconi proposed his candidacy for the European Parliament, as a warning. “He” would say, “this is just more communist lies”…

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