‘Big Brother’ fears as Berlusconi tightens his grip on power

Hot on the heels of his triumphal unification of the parties of the Italian right, including some post-fascist groupings, Berlusconi began selecting the directors of state-run television - increasing his powerful grip over Italian society, according to his more liberal detractors, who claim the PM is going too far.

Among the candidates for prominent positions with RAI 1, the equivalent of the BBC in Italy, was Maurizio Belpietro. He's an effective Berlusconi propagandist who is a familiar face on the three television networks owned by the premier and whose career has progressed from editorship of the Berlusconi family's daily newspaper to that of its weekly magazine.
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Despite the apparent conflict of interests - Berlusconi owns RAI's principal commercial competitor, Mediaset - the prime minister reportedly took an active part in the discussions with his political allies, held earlier in the week at his private residence in Rome.

For that matter, Berlusconi has long taken a close interest in the minutiae of television management. Telephone intercepts showed him intervening personally to promote the acting careers of some of his female friends.

Control of the media, vast personal wealth and a stronger-than-ever political base mean the 73-year-old billionaire can look to the future with unbridled optimism.

The inauguration last weekend of Berlusconi's new party, the People of Liberty (PdL), was a spectacular marriage of showbusiness and political populism. The merger of Berlusconi's Forza Italia party with the post-fascist National Alliance and a sprinkling of minor parties, including one led by the granddaughter of wartime dictator Benito Mussolini, is expected to give Berlusconi more than 40% of the national vote, putting him at the head of one of the largest conservative groupings in Europe.

No mean feat for an apparently impromptu idea announced to a crowd of journalists from the running board of his car in November 2007.

Paradoxically, it is the fascist-inspired National Alliance that will be giving up the trappings of a democratic political party to throw in its lot with Forza Italia, a party founded, funded and monarchically ruled by the former media magnate.

Berlusconi was elected leader of the People of Liberty with near-universal support and personally chose the individuals who help him run it. The party's statute, giving almost absolute power to its leader, was approved by the 6000 delegates gathered in Rome for the occasion. Just four people voted against it.

With unprecedented power and influence at his disposal, Berlusconi took the opportunity to complain that the constitution needed reforming because it gave too little real authority to the prime minister.

It fell to his National Alliance partner Gianfranco Fini, who is speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, to warn against a tendency to "Caesarism" and to ideological conformism in the new party.

The two men had clashed just before the conference when Berlusconi suggested that MPs voting on laws and amendments they didn't really understand could be more efficiently replaced by party whips exercising a block vote in parliament.

The prime minister was firmly rebuked by the speaker for bringing democratic political institutions into disrepute.

"The general impression is that the PdL is born as a monarchy and that if His Majesty Berlusconi can't say that he is the state', he can certainly claim to be the centre-right," commented the historian Mario Cervi in an article for the weekly magazine Gente.

Opposition leader Antonio Di Pietro, a former Milan magistrate who investigated Berlusconi for corruption, went further, arguing that the prime minister was seeking the dictatorial powers invoked by members of the notorious P2 masonic lodge, of which Berlusconi was once a member.

Last week Italian newspapers published photographs of the prime minister as he addressed the packed and euphoric conference, a small figure with outstretched arms at the podium overshadowed by a second, enormous image of himself on the giant screen behind him. His critics said the overtones of George Orwell's "Big Brother" were all too plain.