Berlusconi

Berlusconi was even less tender with Italy’s constitution. This is where the real danger lies. The day before, Berlusconi told students at La Sapienza University in Rome: “to have a real democracy, we need to change the constitutional structure”. He was very clear in what he meant and why the constitution should be changed:

“because the government has no decisionmaking power but at most can only make a proposal to Parliament. This goes to Parliamentary committees and then to the whole Parliament and finally the Head of State must like it… A law which is a thoroughbred when it leaves Cabinet becomes a hippopotamus by the end… And if some leftwing judges don’t like it, they can cite it before the Constitutional Court which since it is made up of a majority of leftwing judges, overturn it. So to have a real democracy, we must change the Constitution and reform the present institutional architecture”.

On Saturday, Berlusconi repeated the speech to party officials to rapturous applause. This time he went a stage further and called the still unnamed “left wing judges” “subversive”. This came after his supporters had put up posters shouting “Get the Red Brigades out of the Milan courts” following on from Berlusconi’s remarks that the prosecution in his trials were terrorists.

The posters and the remarks were particularly grotesque as the Red Brigades killed judges and prosecutors in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Even the most conservative and potentially pro-Berlusconi judge bridles at hearing his murdered colleagues compared to the terrorists who killed them.