Italy’s prime minister: Forza del destino

Date: 31/01/04

A change, they say, is as good as a rest

SILVIO BERLUSCONI, returning to the limelight after a month spent mainly at his villa in Sardinia, certainly looked rested - and changed. A former spokesman joked that his cosmetic surgery had left the prime minister looking like “a cross between Boris Karloff and a lovely doll.” But a shiny, wrinkle-free skin, sculpted eyelids and chiselled jaw were not the only novelties on offer. At a rally to mark the tenth anniversary of his entry into politics and the founding of his party, Forza Italia, Mr Berlusconi signalled that his battle with Italy's judges and prosecutors was entering an even more combative phase.

Last year, the prime minister called Italy's magistrates “mentally disturbed” and “anthropologically different”. That could be dismissed as simple abuse, especially since he claimed to have been tipsy. This time, he was clearly sober - but even more insulting. Quoting approvingly from the writings of an admirer who is a Roman Catholic priest, Mr Berlusconi said fascism had been “less odious” than the prosecutors who led the mani pulite anti-corruption drive of the early 1990s. Many of his problems with the law stem from proceedings that they initiated.

The best-known prosecutor, Antonio Di Pietro, who left the courts to go into politics, said he would sue Mr Berlusconi over his remarks. Sitting judges and prosecutors were outraged. The effect has been to poison the atmosphere just as the judiciary braces for battle over the government's planned judicial reforms. A bill has been approved by the Senate, though it has yet to be debated in the lower house.

With only a touch of hyperbole, the justice minister, Roberto Castelli, calls the bill “epoch-making”. It would be the first reform of the court system since 1942. The bill would erode, though not wholly abolish, the unusual system under which Italian judges and prosecutors follow the same career structure - and so, say critics, develop a collegiate spirit detrimental to fair trials. It would curb the power of judges to deliver sentences manifestly at odds with the letter of the law. It would bar them from political activity (though a proposed ban on belonging to political parties, the opposition says, would violate their constitutional rights). And it would scrap promotion by seniority, making it subject instead to the passing of exams.

Such reforms are open to debate. But, as ever in the Berlusconi era, the real concern is not their objective merits but their subjective intention - which seems to be to undermine Mr Berlusconi's attackers.

Perhaps oddly, the bill does little to tackle the biggest defect in Italian justice: its slowness. Cases can be heard up to three times before final sentencing. Might this be because the prime minister has been a prime beneficiary of delay, several charges against him having run beyond a statute of limitations? Likewise, the bill proposes a more hierarchical structure for prosecutors. Might the hope be to make them more susceptible to government control? The opposition has no doubts. “This is a law born of punitive intent,” said Elvio Fassone of the Left Democrats. He may be wrong. But Mr Berlusconi's attack reinforces suspicions that he is right.

Feature looks at the tensions between the Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi and the judiciary.