The imminent coup d'etat attempt to topple Berlusconi.

international | eu | other press Monday June 15, 2009 19:22 by scorchio - & the suntan lotion crew

Mr B has flown off to meet Obama, the first time they share space since the queen of Engurland ticked Berlusconi off at the G20 gig in April. Their one hour meeting will be had through interpreters since neither speaks the same language or lingo. But before he boarded the plane quipping &/or gaffing yesterday that he was going to Washington "handsome and tanned", he did open a new can of worms so interesting that it merited pick-up in today's Irish Independent and prompted a thoughtful analysis from the Italian "Repubblica" journalist Ezio Mauro, a complete of translation of which to English is reproduced below. It seems despite winning the EU election Mr B really is realising he's on the way out. & now rather than it all being a "leftwing" plot, a "rightwing" name has entered the picture.

"There is a campaign of scandals against me. It is a subversive plan because its aim is to bring down a prime minister and to put in his place another not elected by Italians. If that is not subversion, tell me what is." Although Mr Berlusconi has not identified these alleged palace plotters, Francesco Cossiga, a former Italian president and prime minister has - Mario Draghi, the governor of the Bank of Italy, is favoured by some (who?) as the head of a caretaker government of national unity. Mr Draghi, the head of the central bank for the last three and a half years, has declined to comment.

This is not the first time paranoia that loathesome side-effect of copious viagra and cocaine use has raised its little hard to see head. Berlusconi is thought to be horrified that someone in the core circle in Sardinia has been working against him & it's not just his estranged wife. c/f http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92206?&condense_comment...53204

Mario Draghi doesn't really fit the profile of a modern day socialistic leftist or anarchistic saviour of the Italian people like either Garibaldi or Gramsci. He's a former World Bank director and member of that little mentioned cabal "the group of 30" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_Thirty . He can also importantly (considering the communication difficulties with the current White House which only serve to highlight the inarticulate baffoonery of the Bush years), speak English, of the American variety having been educated at MIT, being curently a trustee of Princeton and having been on the board of Goldman Sachs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Draghi As you can appreciate from this Italian wikipedia photofile though he doesn't appear to have much of a suntan he does have trustworthy wrinkle age lines around his 52 year old eyes. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MarioDraghi.JPG

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"Il Cavaliere e il suo fantasma" = "Berlusconi & his ghost"
by EZIO MAURO

And so we have reached the point then where Prime Minister Berlusconi has publicly denounced a subversive plan to depose him and have him replaced by someone “not elected by the people”. In other words a coup right in the heart of democratic Europe. This reads like an epilogue to Berlusconi’s adventures following on from fifteen years of continual tensions that have been forced upon Italian public debate: to keep this unfortunate country at the right emotional temperature so fitting for the kind of populism that can only dominate the institutions by defying them until the point of evoking political martyrdom. This is indeed the dramatic picture of Italy that the country’s richest and most powerful man carries with him today to America, for his meeting with Obama.

Only Berlusconi knows why he is saying such things, because he is the only one who knows the truth about the disaster that awaits him, a truth that he cannot publicly reveal. Here we can observe the drama of a leader who is prisoner to a climate of defeat even when he wins. All this because in the last fifteen years he hasn’t managed to transform himself into a Statesman even after three victories in his country’s national elections. This man has the consensus, the votes, the numbers and the faithful crowds. But he is not at peace: he lacks security in his leadership and the tranquillity that transforms power into responsibility.

He is being pursued by his other half, from whom he’s constantly trying to escape, feeling the danger of being engulfed by the darker side of his personal history. It’s a tragedy full of excessive and theatrical power because everything is titanic in an affair where personal destinies coincide with that of Italy itself. It’s a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions where Berlusconi himself seems to already know the outcome, to the point of evoking his own political end in front of the country.

But in reality of course, as every right minded Italian knows, there is not and never will be a coup. There is, on the other hand, a rapid decomposition of a leadership that has never known how to make itself into a political culture but has rather closed itself off in the contemplation of its own dominion, believing that it could substitute a man in place of the State, command in place of government and absolute power and charisma in place of politics.

Today this power is beginning to feel the limits of its self sufficiency. What’s distressing Berlusconi is the new institutional scepticism that he’s aware of. Then there’s the international aloofness, the disorientation of the European elite, the criticism by the international press, the decidedly cool treatment by the chancelleries (with the exception of Putin and Gheddafi), the consternation within his own camp where Chamber of Deputies President Fini’s impeccable institutional role contrasts with the Premier’s failings with every passing day.

Berlusconi feels as though he’s losing his touch; a touch that used to transform his every act into an event. Now the tragicomic performance of the three Italian-Libyan days has shown us, on the contrary, that the laws of politics are not those of a ramshackle variety show. But above all Berlusconi has understood that the thread of his uninterrupted fairy tale of victorious and uncontaminated adventures has snapped simply because all of a sudden the Italians have started to really see him for what he is and not just watch him. And they’ve started to judge him too, instead of just listening to him.

It’s an unveiling act.. This is the crack that the vote has opened up within his victory, filling it with worries. The Premier is indeed correct when he quotes the four pilasters that delimit the perimeters of his recent woes: the veline (or TV soubrettes), mixing with minors, the Mills scandal and the suspected illegal use of State aeroplanes. Giuseppe D' Avanzo, who has been investigating into these very issues for reasons that Berlusconi knows very well, has explained today why these represent something other than the slander the Premier claims. These are four cases that Berlusconi built with his own hands, that pursue him because he can’t explain them and that materialize in front of him daily as he tries to escape. Added together these four issues constitute a public scandal rather than a private one as they show, one together with the others, the abuse of power as public opinion is beginning to perceive more and more as events unfold. And it’s this sense of danger that is currently uppermost in Berlusconi’s mind. Since he’s incapable of really talking to the country, of confronting questions posed by the press, of assuming responsibility for his behaviour, he reacts by raising the bets and dragging everyone – both the Institutions and the State- along with him into this, his personal tragedy. Only he and his wife know exactly the depths and implications of this tragedy (as she publicly warned him a short while ago) He therefore reacts by threatening: in fact this market champion has even invited Italian manufacturers not to advertise in “defeatist” newspapers, that’s to say those that criticise him, because his destiny must coincide with that of the country’s. Then he corrects himself by saying he only wanted to limit coverage given to opposition leader Dario Franceschini as if it wasn’t enough having control of six television channels he has had to pass an edict. The likes of this have never been seen in the western world, even if the Italian press, prisoner of a new sense of conformism, prefers to talk about other matters as if liberty of expression, the basis for public opinion in every other democracy, has not already been compromised.

Actually Berlusconi himself is his biggest threat as he reveals his instability, his fear. We must expect the worst if he’s faithful to his words. What can possibly come after denouncing a coup attempt? What will his next move be? And if there really is a subversive threat then everything will be allowed: so how will the Premier use the services and the state apparatus against the presumed “subversives”? How is he already using them? Who’s controlling and who can guarantee in time what Prime Minister Berlusconi transforms into an emergency? We wait for an answer. As far as we’re concerned we’ll continue to behave as if we were in a normal country where dialectics and also the clash between the free press and legitimate power of the country are part of the democratic game.

Then, everyone will be able to judge whether he’s gone too far and where this private and already violent use of state power can lead with a man who we know is capable of anything; even to transform his leadership crisis into the tragedy of an entire country.
http://www.repubblica.it/2009/06/sezioni/politica/berlu...earch
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a cornucopiea of links :

'Tanned' Berlusconi heads for US
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8097988.stm

Under-fire Berlusconi claims he's victim of 'subversive plot'
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/underfire-b....html

Background stories : Czech ex prime minister admits his nude photo in "El Pais" : leftwing plot
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92599

Italian police sieze 700 photos of Berlusconi's Christmas party girly
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92522

"Politics and Showbusiness a deadly embrace" : Berlusconi's Lust
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92206