More Berlusconi

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was indicted for tax fraud, false accounting, and embezzlement and ordered to stand trial beginning November 21st. Also indicted were corporate lawyer David Mills, estranged husband of British cabinet minister Tessa Jowell, Mediaset Chairman Fedele Confalonieri, and several others. The case stems from the purchase of television rights for Americans films and TV shows which was allegedly done by a holding company controlled by Berlusconi, which then sold the rights to Mediaset at an inflated price to create a slush fund for the personal use of Berlusconi and his colleagues. If he is able to delay the final conviction until 2008 then he is going to be able to get off because of the three-year statute of limitations that was passed during his time as Prime Minister.

Also in the news about him was an article saying that he is going to leave Italian politics, with him quoted as telling his close friends "I am leaving" in Il Giornale, a newspaper owned by his brother. One would think this report is accurate but the fact that it is not repeated anywhere else leaves doubt about it. He is 69 years old but that is relatively young in the gerontocracy of Italian politics where the President of the Republic is 80 and the center-right candidate for Senate President is 87. At the end of the five-year parliamentary term he is going to be 74, but that would not make him the oldest Prime Minister that Italy has ever had. Things right now are looking up for Prodi, who has done better than I expected he would as Prime Minister and I will address that in another blog post today or tommorrow. My feeling is that with this case Berlusconi is going to have every incentive to remain at least in parliament if not as Leader of the Opposition because he has some immunities that he would not have otherwise. Even if he leaves politics now, he has made no secret of his ambition to become President of the Republic even as he sought to take power away from that position. The next election comes up for parliament (assuming the government survives the full term) in 2011, and the next Presidential election comes up in 2013. If the center right were to win in 2011, Berlusconi would be 76 at the time of the next presidential election, which would make him younger than either Carlo Azeglio Ciampi or Gregorio Napolitano when they were elected, so that is still a possibility.

I am not sure who the next leader of the House of Freedoms would be if Berlusconi were to resign, as someone is going to have to fill that major void.

It is not likely that Berlusconi is going to spend a day in jail for this, and if he were to return as Prime Minister the trial would be put on hold again. Right before he was about to leave politics, the judge may have given him a reason to stay in.