24.10.2013

Still clinging on

Silvio Berlusconi - master of avoiding his comeuppance

Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was banned from holding public office for two years on October 18. However, it cannot be ruled out that he might make another attempt within the next few months to precipitate a general election before the ban comes into effect. Although the ruling was confirmed by the Milanese court of appeal, he still has the right to take that appeal to the Cassazione (supreme court), which he might exercise purely in order to postpone the implementation of the penalty.

On August 1 the Cassazione had ruled that the Milanese appeal court’s original five-year ban was excessive, since the nominal prison sentence was only four years, and sent the question back to the lower court, with a recommendation of a ban of between one and three years. Obviously then, the Cassazione would regard a two-year ban, which falls right in the middle of its recommended range, as appropriate, and so from a strictly legal point of view a further appeal would be pointless.

The Senate committee on elections has already recommended Berlusconi’s expulsion from the Senate under the Severino anti-corruption law, which imposes a longer ban of six years on anybody convicted of a criminal offence that carries a hypothetical penalty of more than two years’ imprisonment. So far, however, the Senate itself has not voted on his expulsion and Berlusconi is seeking to delay this as long as possible. He is also demanding a secret vote on the question, which he hopes would increase the chance of senators outside the PdL voting to save him. They might do this either because of an acceptance of bribes from the fraudster or, in the case of M5S, as a means of discrediting the PD. Some claim that the M5S would mislead voters into believing that the PD had repeated the same behaviour that in April saw 101 PD grand electors fail to vote for Romano Prodi in the presidential contest.

Berlusconi’s decision to opt to carry out community service rather than accept house arrest, whilst amounting to a tacit admission of the guilt he always denies, also has the effect of further delaying any penalty being imposed on him. House arrest as the default penalty would have started on October 15 if he had not opted for the alternative. The court now has to decide whether to accept or reject the community service option, but a backlog of other cases, involving petty criminals of no celebrity, means that Berlusconi will have to wait months for the judges to come to any conclusion on whether ultimately to allow him the relative freedom of community service or enforce the harsher conditions imposed by house arrest.

Regular readers will note that endless delays on any pretext have been fundamental to the approach taken by Berlusconi and his lawyers to any criminal proceedings in which he has been involved.