The photos were taken in March, 1980. At the time, the young actress Miriam Raffaella Bartolini -- stage name: Veronica Lario -- removed her blouse in a scene of the play "The Magnificent Cuckold," at the Manzoni Theater in Milan. Sitting in the audience was Berlusconi, an up-and-coming owner of a construction company. He was so impressed by the scene that he visited the actress in her dressing room. Later he obtained a divorce to marry Lario.
This image of Veronica's breasts disappeared from public view completely -- someone must have bought up all the negatives. But someone must have released them again recently, allowing Libero to publish the pictures under the headline: "Veronica, the Ungrateful Velina."
The situation grew serious. "I felt I was facing a firing squad," Lario told a friend. The next day "La Signora," as Berlusconi called her at the time, met with her attorney to prepare for a divorce.
The country is as delighted as it is divided over this War of the Roses. Critics accuse Lario of seeking to force her husband to his knees and negotiate better terms for the divorce. Berlusconi's fortune is estimated at €6-8 billion ($8-10.7 billion), a figure that inevitably puts the divorce on the business pages.
Lario, for her part, owns real estate and stock worth an estimated €30 million ($40 million). The couple has otherwise already agreed to a separation of property. In the event of a divorce, Lario would lose her right to a quarter of Berlusconi's assets. But the couple's children are a different story. Lario has long demanded that all five of Berlusconi's children be entitled to equal shares of the estate, which would give her three children a majority in the prime minister's media empire. Berlusconi currently has only the children from his first marriage installed in key positions. His son Piersilvio is a member of the board of the Mediaset Group, and his daughter Marina is chairwoman of Mondadori, Italy's largest publishing group.
"Veronica is a classic mamma, who defends her children and frets when they are not given the same treatment as the other children," says art collector Roberto D'Agostino, Rome's king of gossip.
'That's Just the Way I Am'
So far no one has given a logical explanation for what connects the most powerful man in Italy with Noemi Letizia's family. They're based in Portici, at the base of Mt. Vesuvius. Letizia's mother is said to have once been a velina at Canale 5, a Berlusconi TV station. This, in turn, has fueled paternity rumors. Could "Papi" be more than a nickname?
Berlusconi claims to have known Letizia's father, Benedetto, a Naples city employee, since the 1990s. According to Berlusconi, Benedetto Letizia called the prime minister to suggest political candidates, and promptly invited the prime minister to his daughter's birthday party. But why have local party officials never noticed her father as an activist, not to mention a close friend of Berlusconi? And why did the prime minister, on his way to a crisis meeting about Naples' garbage problems, happen to have a gold necklace in his jacket pocket? Berlusconi repels these questions the way he's repelled lawsuits.
"If there had been anything risqué, unclean, secret or hidden," Berlusconi said on "Porta a Porta," "would the prime minister of this country have been crazy enough to put himself in such a situation?"
A private film crew constantly follows Berlusconi around, recording his every step. But his "Big Brother" act is part of everyday life for him. He even showed up at Noemi Letizia's birthday party with eight limousines and his usual entourage. "That's just the way I am," he said, "and I won't let anyone take that away from me."
Chi, a tabloid owned by Berlusconi, published the most harmless of photos of the party. Skeptics wondered, in a country that habitually reaches for conspiracy theories, whether the photos were real or a product of Photoshop. The question will remain unanswered. Berlusconi is more powerful than ever, and what the Economist has called the "berlusconization" of Italy is now a historic fact. His party, the PdL, has a 20-percent lead in the polls over the Democratic Party. The government is more homogeneous than ever, while the opposition is hopelessly divided, after years in search of a left-liberal hero, an Obama.
Berlusconi may be the only European leader whose approval ratings have remained constant in the recession, despite the fact that Italy's gross domestic product is predicted to fall by up to 4.4 percent this year, as productivity drops even further and the professors at the universities grow older. The global financial storm has done as little damage to his approval ratings as to his fortune. For Berlusconi, 2009 started with a check for €159,335,953.92 (over $213 million) -- dividends from his shares in Mediaset.
His supporters point to the government's successes. The garbage crisis in Naples has been contained; the Campania Region's first waste incineration plant is up and running. Italy has seen reforms in the public sector and schools. The chronically overburdened judiciary will undergo reforms, as dubious as the motives may be. And even Berlusconi's rivals acknowledge the decisiveness he demonstrated in the wake of the earthquake in the Abruzzo Region.
None of this makes Berlusconi a reformer. His visions last until the next poll is taken. He devotes his attention to every acute crisis. He even took his cabinet with him to meet in Naples and in the L'Aquila earthquake region. He changes his convictions unabashedly, dancing on every stage and in every role, sometimes posing as an economic liberal and sometimes, as in the case of the national airline Alitalia, as a state capitalist. The end still sanctifies every political position, and Berlusconi's supreme end is always to promote his own power.
In his understanding of democracy, an opposition is unnecessary. "He does so much for the people," as Letizia confirmed in her interview. Who couldn't agree with that?
'My Turn to Talk'
With his dependable instinct for the mood of the people, and in the face of all prophecies of the European intelligentsia, this man has set the agenda south of the Alps for 15 years. That's unlikely to change in the near future, divorce or no divorce.
Berlusconi himself is the only person who can trip up Berlusconi. This explains the concern and hectic activity with which he sought to disentangle himself from the Noemi affair last week on every media program, starting with "Porta a Porta."
So -- will they clap? Of course, the studio audience claps. And it's obvious how Berlusconi soaks up the sound of applause, how it inflates him, even elevated as he is on four-centimeter heels. The program on "Porta a Porta" was subtitled: "Now it's my turn to talk," a surreal sentence for a potentate who never stops talking.
The polls at the end of the week showed only a slight drop in his approval ratings within the Catholic electorate. Two-thirds of voters still see no reason to file for political divorce. Unless there are more revelations, Berlusconi will soon be able to abandon the defensive, an unaccustomed role, and end the crisis "with class," as he said on Wednesday, beginning to regain to his old confidence.
Even the Vatican was able to breathe a sigh of relief. According to the Catholic Church, a divorcé can receive Communion as long as he isn't remarried. Papa Silvio, in other words, will likely continue to celebrate Communion with Papa Benedict.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Post to other social networks:
Stay informed with our free news services:
| All news from SPIEGEL International | Twitter | RSS |
| All news from Europe section | RSS |
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2009
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH
