You have to hand it to him, said Bill Emmott in The Guardian. Silvio Berlusconi, aged 71, less than two years after his defeated five-year government had left Italy as the slowest-growing economy in western Europe, has won his third election. His victory should, however, be “deeply troubling for anyone who cares about democracy”.
Berlusconi is Italy’s richest man, enjoying a near-monopoly of commercial TV as well as owning a big publishing empire. For those who “despair” of Italy’s political system, his victory can only “serve to fulfil their worst apprehensions”, agreed The Independent.
As a businessman who has “used his wealth to buy up the media, his position to avoid prosecution on corruption charges and his political command to alter the electoral laws in his own favour”, he embodies the worst aspects of politics in the country.
Yet Italians clearly believe he will do a better job than his predecessor, Romano Prodi, said Ivor Roberts in The Independent. Prodi’s nine-party coalition government proved a disaster, “reducing living standards in an attempt to balance the books“ and refusing to address the structural problems of the economy, rendering it the most uncompetitive in Europe.
But Berlusconi looks unlikely to implement the reforms that would change this. He blames the European Central Bank for Italy’s woes and has pledged an alliance with Nicolas Sarkozy, aimed at “asserting the primacy of elected leaders over interest rates and the currency“, said Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph.
His demands have “no chance of becoming reality”, said Simon Nixon on Breakingviews.com, but the row is “too convenient” for him to let it drop; he can use the “ECB bogeyman as an excuse to duck future fiscal and structural reforms.” It doesn’t bode well and will not increase harmony in the EU.