Berlusconi - the front man

Silvio Berlusconi, who on Sunday hopes to be elected as Italy’s Prime Minister, is a front man, behind whom Fascists and the Italian Mafia are hiding. The result of Sunday’s election could be crucial for Italy’s relationship with the rest of Europe, since the rest of the EU has expressed horror at the prospect of this hotch-potch of villains being elected.

Berlusconi has been linked to the Italian Mafia before and this is why he was forced to resign the last time he was Prime Minister in 1994. Allying his Forza Italia party now with two Fascist parties, the Liga Nord of Umberto Bossi (who is clearly insane) and the Alianza Nationale (Gianfranco Fini), Berlusconi loses all credibility.

To give an example of the Liga Nord’s behaviour, here is a prime example. Hearing that a Mosque was to be build on a piece of land, this political party arranged for a herd of pigs to be released on it so as to make the land impure.

In the last thirty years, the number of immigrants in Italy has risen from 21,000 to 120,000 (officially), coming from 133 different countries. The more numerous are Filipinos and Albanians. In the Milanese telephone list, the Chinese surname Hu is the sixth most common.

The Fascist parties, AN and Liga Nord, try to exploit national sentiment. In 1994, Bossi even defended that the north of Italy should secede from the south and set up a separate Republica Padana. “Rome the Thief” was another of his catch-phrases, trying to stir up north-south hatred.

Now Bossi alludes to the European Union as being “The European Soviet Union” and makes comments like “the plan of the European left is a worldwide plan which only the mind of Comrade Stalin could have imagined”. How Berlusconi can ally himself to people of this quality speaks volumes about his own political vision. There is an old adage which says “Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are”.

How Berlusconi imagines he can gain political credibility by allying himself to fascists is beyond reason.

It is true that he makes a good speech and that his flamboyant character provides the Italian people with a strong television image, an image which can win elections. Recently, he made a televised public contract with his people, saying :”I, Silvio Berlusconi...promise before the Italian people...” and he produced a list of five promises: reduction of taxes, increase of minimum pensions, creation of 1.5 million work-posts, public works projects and combat against crime. If after 5 years, four of these pledges have not been achieved, he said he will not present himself for re-election.

The question is that such pledges are vote-winners. Pravda.Ru contacts in the Italian diplomatic service stated that the election hangs in the balance, with 20% of the voters undecided in the run-in to Sunday’s election.

For Umberto Bossi, Gianfranco Fini and Silvio Berlusconi, some useful information. When they open their bedroom windows in the morning and look out over the Piazza del Duomo, in front of Milan’s magnificent cathedral, the red flag with a strange double-headed black eagle in the middle of it is the flag of the Albanian Consulate.

It is this country’s Mafia in New York which makes the “Cosa Nostra” look like grandmothers.

TIMOTHY BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru LISBON