Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1501361
8 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 14 JUNE 2023 NEWS NEWS Growing up with Berlusconi: How Italy's Silvio Berlusconi died on Monday at the age of 86. JAMES DEBONO looks at the legacy of Italy's scandal ridden and f lamboyant politician and draws some parallels with Maltese politics MALTESE born in the 1960s and 1970s, grew up watching en- tertainment staples on TV like Drive In, Striscia la Notizia, Am- ici, Non e la Rai and the Maur- izio Costanzo Show. They were screened on Medi- aset, the private media empire founded by Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi was the pioneer of a new kind of TV; one which was advert driven and tab- loidish, in which celebrity gos- sip and scantily dressed female dancers took centre stage. In 1994, this provided Berlus- coni with the perfect vehicle to launch Forza Italia, which went on to win national elections a few months later, thanks to catchy tunes and slogans promising a "governo del fare" (a government of doers). Yet before he seduced a na- tion with his contagious op- timism, he had already trans- formed millions of TV screens in family living rooms into vir- tual gentlemen's clubs in which pole dancers flaunted their curves in peak time hours dur- ing game shows. This was not an easy feat considering that until the mid 1980s it was illegal in Italy for private TV stations to transmit nationally. Berlusconi man- aged to circumvent the ban by acquiring several local and re- gional channels, on which he broadcast the same schedule of programmes simultaneously. His money attracted sea- soned TV presenters like Mike Bongiorno and producers like Antonio Ricci, the produc- er of satirical shows Drive In and Striscia la Notizia, which gave Mediaset an edge over the more serious, intellectual and austere public broadcaster RAI. Holy trinity: Real estate, TV and football Berlusconi's success is inter- linked to his self-projection as a man of the people who of- fered an entertainment sched- ule which was in synch with national popular aspirations. This image was reinforced by his acquisition of AC Milan in 1986, which he transformed from a struggling outfit in- to a star-studded dream team which included Dutch super- stars like Ruud Gullit, Marco Van Basten and Frank Rijkaard. It was Berlusconi's success in real estate, football and TV which shaped the dreams of millions of Italians in a decade marked by rampant consum- erism made possible by rapid economic growth. Yet the 1980s were also marked by widespread corrup- tion, the extent of which was only exposed in 1992 when the tangentopoli scandal was uncovered by a pool of magis- trates in Milan who embarked on Operazione Mani Pulite (Operation Clean Hands). It was an operation which left businessmen like Berlusconi politically orphaned. For Berlusconi's rise to the top was also a result of his hob- nobbing with powerful politi- cal networks like Propaganda 2 (P2), a masonic lodge founded by the neo fascist Licio Gelli, whose clandestine plan was to take over the country's institu- tions to thwart the prospect of a democratically elected com- munist government. But Berlusconi also courted mainstream politicians like the socialist Bettino Craxi whose backing was essential in secur- ing a TV licence for Berlusco- ni's media empire. Berlusconi's success was also rooted in his sprawling real es- tate empire in Milan whose ex- pansion also attracted the pry- ing eyes of the judiciary which had started looking for possible infiltration of mafia money in the rich north. How to create a new party and win an election in one year Yet it was only after tangen- topoli had wiped out the tra- ditional parties led by the pol- iticians that he had befriended over the previous decades, that Berlusconi, decided to enter the political fray. In 1994, Berlusconi used all his business acumen and his experience in the media and the football world, to create a new party whose name Forza Italia evoked the love for the national team. He did so by flooding the air- waves he owned with adverts. In so doing he accomplished his mission; that of stopping the former communists and their allies from filling the vac- uum left by the centrist parties ravished by the 'bribesville' scandal. But his success was only made possible by co-opting two far right parties, the separatist Lega Nord and the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, making Italy the second coun- try in Europe after Austria to break the post WWII taboo of including the far right in na- tional governments. Berlusconi deserves some credit for taming the radical- ism of his allies, as the Lega Nord gradually renounced its separatist roots, and Gianfran- co Fini repudiated fascism as an 'absolute evil' during a visit to Israel in 2003. Yet this was never a clear-cut process, with the far right find- ing a new raison d'etre in its crusade against irregular mi- gration. This shift to the right also left a strain on friendly rela- tions with Malta which during the third Berlusconi admin- istration found itself bullied by home affairs minister Rob- erto Maroni, who repeatedly refused to rescue migrants in closer vicinity to Lampedusa. And in a case of reaping what he sowed, Berlusconi ended up losing his hegemony over the Italian right wing when Forza Italia was first overtaken by Salvini's Lega in 2018 and sub- sequently by Meloni's Fratelli