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Ciao, baby! Why Italy just can't say no to Silvio

It's almost beggars belief that good 'ol Silvio, Italian PM, remains in office - and with seemingly little dent to his popularity. How come? - and how does he do it?

The Independent provides the background dope on the Teflon PM [a la Ronald Reagan?]:

"They must be among the harshest claims ever lodged against a European prime minister, and this month they were made in public, before Sicilian public prosecutors, and backed by documentary evidence. The cornerstone of the fortune of the tycoon who has ruled Italy for most of the past 15 years was money from the Mafia, which Silvio Berlusconi used to build his first housing estate, the project which made him rich and famous. And when, in 1993, after the meltdown of Italy's major political parties in a corruption scandal, Berlusconi decided to launch himself into politics, it was with the support of Bernardo Provenzano, the capo di capi of the Cosa Nostra who, 13 years later, was finally arrested after many years on the run on the very day that Berlusconi lost the general election."

And:

"Under Blair and Brown, the British Government has demonstrated morally dubious equivocation towards the resident but non-domiciled kleptocracy, including those members of it that sit in the House of Lords. In Italy they do these things more democratically: the indulgence of Berlusconi for those with a horror of tax – those who share the late hotelier Leona Helmsley's belief that tax is for little people – extends across half the population, including many of the little people themselves.

Italy today is devouring its own entrails. Private affluence and public squalor; constantly shrinking budgets which inflict vicious blows on schools and universities and hospitals and museums while the entrenched gerontocracies which preside over them are untouched; talented and vigorous youth who flee abroad to find study and work opportunities in ever-greater numbers, while their less-enterprising contemporaries struggle to make ends meet in jobs with miserable pay and no security; organised crime which constantly extends its reach; fear and hatred of immigrants, cynically encouraged by politicians in the government: this is Berlusconi's dismal legacy."

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