Silvio Berlusconi is a personality. In the United States, he is best known for his antics and scandals. He is currently in proceedings for four different trials, has been tried on 21 previous occasions and, on Aug. 1, his sentence for imprisonment because of tax evasion was confirmed. Berlusconi has no future in Italian politics, yet this does not equate to improvement for the country.
On Oct. 2, Italy’s Prime Minister Enrico Letta and his left-right split coalition faced a parliamentary vote of no confidence. Perhaps out of humiliation or more possibly to assert his political control over the government, Berlusconi instructed his ministers to vote against this coalition. Halfway through the vote, there was a revolt inside his party, the Popolo della Libertà, and many members officially left. After realizing he no longer had enough votes to bring down the ruling coalition, he desperately declared that he switched intentions.
The parliamentary no-confidence vote left Berlusconi publicly embarrassed with a smaller and more fragmented PdL. Now it is more unlikely that Berlusconi will receive the presidential pardon and will serve his jail sentence under house arrest. To make matters worse for Berlusconi, the upper house of Parliament will soon vote on whether to remove him from the Senate. Many expect this vote will not go in his favor. Berlusconi has never seemed so weak since he entered politics in 1994.
Despite Berlusconi’s looming exit, nothing obviously hints at any possible improvement in the near future. Italy has a debt-to-GDP ratio that has steadily increased to 130 percent, and the distance between Italian and German debt has only increased since 2012. Letta’s split coalition lacks the power to implement any of the major economic reforms that Italy desperately needs. In the 2013 elections, MoVimento Cinque Stelle, a newly formed anti-politics party founded by comedian Beppe Grillo and also known as the Five-Star Movement, gained 25 percent of the votes in both houses of the Senate. Their extreme and often contradictory views have great power in Italian politics, and their ability to veto any major bill has made it increasingly difficult for Letta’s coalition to pass anything through Parliament.
At the end of last month, the national statistics office declared the economy to have continued to shrink this quarter. Italy has been on the verge of a Greece-like disaster for years. It is beginning to seem like the only way to unify politicians and enact these reforms is for Rome to become more like Athens in 2010. Perhaps Italy can climb out of the crevasse only by falling deeper into economic distress.
A version of this article appeared in the Tuesday, Nov. 12 print edition. Vittorio Bisin is a contributing columnist. Email him at [email protected].
