Beppe Grillo's V-day salute to Berlusconi

As predicted here two months ago, Silvio Berlusconi has comfortably won the weekend election in Italy to become Prime Minister for the third time. Berlusconi’s latest comeback was at the hands of the distinctly uncharismatic centre-left opponent Walter Veltroni. But with Italy’s deepening problems in the areas of faltering competitiveness, unsustainable fiscal deficits, broken governmental services, corruption and a bloated bureaucracy, Berlusconi’s most implacable opponent may turn out to be an almost sixty old comedian and actor who has the ear of many everyday Italians, and increasingly, a large worldwide audience.

That man is Beppo Grillo. Grillo is famous not for his comedy or his thespian abilities but for his blog. In it, his acerbic writings strikes at the heart of Italy’s biggest scourge: rampant political corruption. Grillo is no fan of fellow media tart Berlusconi. In his blog, he has called him the "psychotic dwarf" and "asphalt head”. The English language version of his blog can be viewed here. As of 16 April, Technorati ranks Grillo’s site as the 13th most popular in the blogosphere worldwide with over 9,000 incoming links in the last six months.

Guiseppe Piero Grillo was born 60 years ago in the small Ligurian town of Savignone. He was educated as an accountant and he became a comedian by chance improvising a monologue in an audition. He was discovered by television presenter Pippo Baudo and he began to appear on Italian TV shows. As his success rose, he launched his own show called Grillometro where his particular brand of satire began to offend Italian politicians. He condemned the then ruling Socialists for corruption. As he created more enemies, his appearances on television became rarer.

In Time magazine’s first annual blog index released last month, the Blog di Beppo Grillo was voted the most interesting political blog. Time noted Grillo’s popularity to the “international language of outrage”. Their nomination concluded that “America could use a political satirist fuelled by this sort of outrage, but for now, there's Beppe”.

The most successful of Grillo’s stunts was his September 2007 rally across 300 Italian cities and towns for his “Il Giorno del Vaffanculo” (“Fuck Off Day” in English). Fuck Off Day was designed to encourage citizens to forcibly remove from office members of the Italian Parliament who have criminal convictions. Hundreds of thousands turned up for the rallies. The campaign was so successful he has arranged to follow it up with V2-Day on 25 April to protest against the subservience of the press. Grillo promoted the idea during his election tour of the country which attracted great crowds but was studiously ignored by the Berlusconi-dominated media.

While Grillo has not yet put himself forward as an electoral candidate, he has allowed the few candidates he likes to use his “Lista Grillo” (Grillo’s List) symbol as an endorsement. Grillo has publicly stated that no-one with a criminal record should be allowed to stand for office – that immediately rules himself out as he was convicted of manslaughter after a 1980 road accident in which three passengers died in a car with Grillo at the wheel. But Grillo prefers to be a catalyst rather a protagonist. The New Yorker magazine described Grillo accurately as a “distinctly Italian combination of Michael Moore and Stephen Colbert: an activist and vulgarian with a deft ear for political satire.”

The Knight rides again: Berlusconi likely to win Italian election

Silvio Berlusconi is poised to win his third term as Italian Prime Minister in the snap election called for April. The man known as Il Cavaliere, "The Knight", is riding high in opinion polls. Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition is at least 10 percentage points ahead of his opponents. This week he has kept out of the media spotlight as after his 97 year old mother died on Sunday. But he is expected to go on the attack once he comes out of mourning showing that the country’s wealthiest man remains a dominant force in Italian politics.

Berlusconi is seriously rich. In 2006, Forbes ranked Silvio Berlusconi as the 37th wealthiest person in the world with an estimated personal wealth of $11 billion. He is the owner of Fininvest investment company, which has interests in television, life insurance, movie production, magazines, news and the AC Milan football club. But Berlusconi was never satisfied by wealth alone. He formed his political party Forza Italia (named for a football chant) in 1993 and he became Prime Minister just one year later in coalition with neo-fascist Alleanza Nazionale and Northern League. That lasted one year but he returned to power in 2001. His subsequent five-year stint is a post-war record in Italy’s volatile political landscape.

His likely third win will be a remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of the 71 year old Berlusconi coming just 18 months after Italy exulted in removing him from office. While in power, he was heavily criticised for putting himself above the law and using his media empire to stifle criticism. He also raised eyebrows with his blunders, eccentricities, and apparent misogyny. No one was exactly sure what he and his party Forza Italia stood for, except perhaps for Berlusconi himself.

According to Bronwen Maddox writing in The Times, Berlusconi does not deserve another chance to become PM. Maddox cites his conflicts of interest with his media and business empire, his change of laws while in power to sidestep charges of false accounting and the fact that nothing in his record suggested he merited another shot at leadership. Maddox said Berlusconi’s most damaging legacy was his 2005 reform of the electoral law which replaced the first-past-the-post element with proportional representation. The first-past-the-post law had been introduced in 1993 and ended Italy’s decades of insecure governments.

Berlusconi’s law change ushered in the fragile nine-party coalition of Romani Prodi which resigned 12 months ago after a Senate defeat on Prodi’s decision to keep Italy’s 1,800 troops in Afghanistan. However Prodi cobbled together another administration, the 61st Italian government since World War II. However he found history repeating itself in January this year. This time the Senate passed another no confidence motion after a small centrist party pulled out of the coalition. This time there was no reprieve and Prodi was left with no alternative but to resign and call a snap election to be held 13-14 April.

Berlusconi was immediate ready to pounce calling for stability in the Senate. His centre-right coalition is now aiming to recruit the small centrist and Catholic party whose defection sank Prodi. Prodi has since stood aside and Berlusconi’s new rival will be Rome's 52-year-old mayor Walter Veltroni. Veltroni has been criticised on the left by Communist and Green groups for not forging a coalition with them. They urged him to rethink his solo strategy and avoid "handing Mr Berlusconi victory on a silver platter". Veltroni, a former Communist himself, has refused these entreaties saying he was open to parliamentary alliances later on with "the reform-minded left, but not the radical left”.

Veltroni says he is avoiding alliances in order to give his Democratic Party a strong identity. This is likely to be a longer term gamble to strengthen his bid to win future elections. He has achieved some success as mayor of Rome, being at the helm when the city achieved 6.4 per cent of the national GDP growing faster than any other part of Italy. Given his relative youth and Italy’s unstable parliamentary system, an election win may not be too far in the future. For now however his uncompromising attitude has left the door wide open for "Il Cavaliere" Berlusconi to ride to a comfortable victory in April.