Berlusconi saves his skin

A corruption trial against Silvio Berlusconi and UK lawyer David Mills goes ahead this week despite the Italian prime minister's attempts to halt proceedings by accusing the court of bias. Yet it will not be long before Berlusconi gets his wish. 

The 71-year old leader is charged with paying Mills $600,000 in 1997, from alleged secret funds held by his media empire Mediaset, to withhold incriminating details of his business dealings. Both men deny any wrongdoing. Berlusconi’s attempts to pass a ‘premier-saving’ law that would make the holders of top public offices, including his own, immune from prosecution, should pay off. He has tried it before, in 2004, yet Italy’s Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional. The bill, which suspends the statute of limitations while ongoing trials are blocked, is a rewording of that same law. This time, Berlusconi’s majorities in both houses of parliament are likely to ensure the bill passes into law, which will suspend his trial in Milan.

It has boiled down into an ugly argument over democracy. Berlusconi bristles that the judges who pursue him are 'a cancer’ in the country’s democracy. The National Association of Magistrates, which represents the public prosecutors whom Berlusconi accuses of hounding him -- although he has never been convicted -- has called Berlusconi's comments ‘grave and unjustified’. Antonio Di Pietro, head of the opposition Italy of Values party, warned the bill would usher in a ‘sweet dictatorship’.

Judges in Milan say they have almost finished gathering testimony and could reach a verdict before the summer recess, although another charge of money-laundering against Berlusconi and Mills may be kicked into the long grass once again under the statute of limitations.