2023-06-12 10:44:49
There will remain of Silvio Berlusconi first an image. An unchanging smile on a wax-like face, permanently tanned and topped with slicked back, slicked back hair. Pleasant, facetious (a book brings together his best jokes), energetic, he animated Italian public life for half a century. Adored, admired, imitated, mocked, insulted, hated, killed during his lifetime in fiction… Never has a politician aroused so many passions.
Open-heart surgery in 2016 and sick with Covid in September 2020, he multiplied hospital stays. His election to the European Parliament in 2019, at the age of 82, surprised foreign observers. Not the Italians, who hadn’t dubbed it the “Caiman” for nothing, after this hard-skinned reptile. His rallying to Giorgia Meloni during the election campaign last September, allowed him to return to the forefront of the political scene, although physically very weak.
Singer and appliance salesman
Born in 1936 near Milan, to a banker father and a stay-at-home mother, Silvio Berlusconi studied literature and law, sang on cruise liners and sold household appliances before making a fortune in real estate. . In the 1970s and 1990s, money flowed. A bank linked to sponsors of the Sicilian mafia lends him some.
The young Silvio brings out of the ground two residential districts of several thousand inhabitants in Milan. It was from there that he launched his first local TV in 1974, which he used to convince the nearby airport to divert air traffic so as not to disturb the tranquility of the occupants. In 1986, he bought AC Milan, a moribund football club which he put back on its feet by mopping up debts, buying players and communicating.
“He becomes the model of the winner, of the new man who made himself and knows how to make decisions”, explains the Neapolitan documentary filmmaker Giuseppe Pesce, author of The B side of the story. Berlusconi, between cinema and television” (2021, not translated into French).
With his private television channels (including La Cinq, launched in France in 1986) and the European cups won by his football team, Silvio Berlusconi descended into the political arena in 1994. To avoid embarrassing investigations into his empire media, even prison, says most of his biographers. Supported by his friend and mentor the socialist and former President of the Council Bettino Craxi, he created his centre-right party Forza Italia (“Go Italy!”), liberal, defender of family and work.
“Il Cavaliere” revives hope
Anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino have just been murdered. Operation Clean Hands shattered traditional post-war political parties by exposing a system of widespread corruption. The Italians are upset, disgusted. With his devastating optimism, his simple talk, his corporate successes, his TVs offering games and naked starlets, the Knight – one of his nicknames – revives hope.
“By adopting techniques worthy of a Hollywood star, he never made a secret of wanting to entertain rather than be a great conductor.ANDtat »remarked in 2018 the actor Toni Servillo, who played him in Paolo Sorrentino’s film Silvio and the others.
Knowing how to bring together right-wing forces (including neofascists), the businessman won the elections and became President of the Council in April 1994. the record longevity at the head of the country since the beginning of the Italian Republic in 1946.
He enacted 21 laws to the person to protect the interests of its holding companies (Mediaset, Mondadori, Fininvest) and its own person from magistrates. He gets close to George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin and Muammar Gaddafi. But also knows how to comfort the country during the deadly L’Aquila earthquake in 2009.
“Apart from a few simplification laws for businesses and a reduction in bureaucracy, he has not made any major structural reforms, points out the political scientist Giovanni Orsina, professor of contemporary history and author of Berlusconism in the history of Italy (Les Belles Lettres, 2018). On the other hand, he modernized the way of doing politics, by inventing the personal party and by making himself the symbol of the people and of anti-politics, themes that have radiated from all political forces. »
Convictions for corruption and tax evasion
History will remember Berlusconi above all his countless trials, his convictions for corruption and tax evasion, his diplomatic blunders, his scabrous evenings the flowers with prostitutes and minors in his Lombard villa in Arcore. The millions of Italians who loved him so much (half of the voters in his most glorious hours) forgave him everything. “It’s absurd but it’s the reality, like a toxic love passion”deciphers Giuseppe Pesce.
By showing himself to be imperfect, fallible (his legal affairs and the economic crisis of 2008 pushed him to resign in 2011), Silvio Berlusconi has uninhibited some of the Italians, deemed uncivil, schemers, hostile to institutions. “Never before had any leading Italian political leader dared to say so openly, so explicitly, so brazenly that Italians are fine the way they are,” writes Giovanni Orsina.
Silvio Berlusconi leaves behind five children and a fortune estimated at 5.5 billion euros in 2021, but no political dolphin. His party, reduced in recent years to the role of arbiter between his ultra-rightist allies Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni, could disappear with him.
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An eternal ghost
September 29, 1936. Silvio Berlusconi was born in Milan.
1978. Founds the Fininvest holding company, which will become the second Italian private group, notably controlling three television channels (Mediaset) and the country’s largest publisher (Mondadori).
1986. Buys AC Milan football club, which he will sell in 2017 to Chinese investors.
1994. Creates the centre-right party Forza Italia.
1994-1995, 2001-2006, 2008-2011. President of the council.
2013. Sentenced for tax evasion, he did a year of community service.
2015. Acquitted after a first conviction for child prostitution and abuse of power, in the “Ruby” and “Bunga-bunga” cases.
September 2022. Re-election to the Senate, from which he had been expelled for tax evasion.
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