Why the prime minister may yet survive his latest sordid sex scandals

Too many late nights?

CETTO LA QUALUNQUE is an irredeemably corrupt, vulgar businessman from Calabria, Italy’s mobster-ridden toe. He has just returned from a stretch on the run from the law to stand for mayor of his native, bullet-ridden Marina di Sopra (ominously twinned with Weimar). Unlike Martin Luther King, he says, “I have no dream…but I do like pilu [a dialect term for a bit of tail].” Mr La Qualunque, the central character in a new film, “Qualunquemente”, is an invention. But this week he suddenly looked awfully real.

On January 17th Milan prosecutors submitted to parliament a dossier of statements, reports and wiretap transcripts that depicted scenes as extravagantly sordid as anything in the much-trailed comedy. They included orgiastic parties staged at the home of Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, involving more than 20 half-naked women, and a room for what are known to participants as “Bunga Bunga” sessions, equipped for pole-dancing, with wardrobes full of skimpy nurses’ and policewomen’s uniforms.

The dossier summarised an inquiry that represents perhaps the biggest threat so far to Mr Berlusconi and his three-year-old conservative government. On January 14th the prime minister learnt that he had been placed formally under investigation, suspected of two offences: paying for sex with an underage prostitute and abusing his position by trying to cover it up. The alleged prostitute is a Moroccan runaway, Karima el-Mahroug (known as Ruby). The dossier, sent to Rome because investigators need parliamentary consent for a crucial office search, claims that Ms el-Mahroug visited Mr Berlusconi’s villa near Milan eight times in 2010. When she was taken to a police station on suspicion of theft in May, she was handed over to an associate of the prime minister after a call from his office. The prosecutors believe they have enough proof to have Mr Berlusconi indicted without a pre-trial hearing. He could even be in the dock by May.

The solution to this crisis that might suggest itself in most other countries was flatly ruled out by the prime minister on January 18th. “Resign?” he asked journalists. “Are you mad?” Once again, he seems bent on facing down claims that would persuade most normal public figures that the time had come for retirement, perhaps to a monastery. This is the seventh sex scandal in which Mr Berlusconi has been personally implicated. But as the others have shown, the mechanisms that drive out politicians elsewhere do not really apply in Italy, or at least not to Mr Berlusconi.

Most political leaders in other countries are persuaded to go before any charges reach the courts by their own followers “for the good of the party”. But since the electoral law introduced by Mr Berlusconi’s previous government in 2005 makes Italian parliamentarians dependent for re-election entirely on their party leaders, who decide where to place candidates on the party lists, such rebellions are almost impossible to organise. This is especially true in the prime minister’s People of Freedom (PdL) movement, many of whose parliamentarians owe their political careers to Mr Berlusconi.

After surviving two opposition no-confidence motions last year, the prime minister’s main apparent vulnerability is to desertion by the PdL’s allies in the Northern League. So far, they have remained loyal, even though part of the league’s original mission was to clean up public life. But the government is now so hamstrung that it may be unable to secure the tax reforms that the Northern League’s leader, Umberto Bossi, touts as the price of continued support. Unless he withdraws that support, the only route that could topple the prime minister would seem to run through the courts. And that is a potentially winding path, punctuated by side-turnings down which Mr Berlusconi could easily escape again.

For a start, his lawyers argue that the Milan prosecutors have no right to investigate the alleged offences, since Mr Berlusconi’s villa lies outside the city’s judicial boundaries (as does the home of the police official who took the late-night call from his office that led to Ms el-Mahroug’s release). They will also note that Mr Berlusconi and his young friend have both denied having sex and say there is no conclusive proof that they did, let alone that he paid for it. Accounts of the “Bunga Bunga” sessions include much alleged lewdness, but no mention of actual sex.

The accusation that the prime minister abused his powers may be easier to prove and carries a heavier maximum sentence (12 years against three for having sex with a juvenile prostitute). But Mr Berlusconi’s lawyers could protest that such a charge requires trial by a special court and approval by the Chamber of Deputies.

There are two big dangers in this uncertain situation. One is that the government, which has been unable to do much for the past two years because its leader has been repeatedly distracted by problems of his own making, remains inert for months to come, heedless of Italy’s economic problems. The second, perhaps greater, risk, which was suggested by Mr Berlusconi this week, is that he may seek a new mandate to crush the independence of the judiciary in an election that might threaten the very foundations of his 150-year-old country. Poor Italy.