Italy: When a giant falls...

The former prime minister exhausted the appeals process and was finally – definitively – sentenced for the first time on August 1, for tax fraud. But he may yet avoid a ban from public office, leading Italian newspapers to wonder how long his personal fate will loom over the country’s politics.


To arrive to this result - get full justice - it took 10 years of investigation, six years of trial with the route repeatedly blocked by judiciary 'monsters' created by premier Berlusconi’s own hands to help the prosecuted Berlusconi, undermining the code and the procedures and to form new ones in his own image and likeness.


The Italian Right Wing announced that they will bring down the present government if the cavalliere is imprisoned.


What should be avoided now is that the country pays the bill, writes La Stampa, under the headline: “Berlusconi condemned: I don’t leave”. The newspaper notes in its editorial that for once Italians should let “rationality prevail” and ask 

themselves if –we can try to get out of the crisis into which we have sunk or if we should embark on a new season of shouting, blood-letting, and electoral campaigning. The Court of Cassation put end, it always does, to a series of judicial twists and turns. And it certainly doesn't have to be the beginning of our end.

Berlusconi's sentence cannot be considered a 'private' matter. It is on the contrary a public and political fact at top levels. It will certainly produce political consequences. For instance it will force the PdL to face the reality of its crippled leadership.The government's destiny is uncertain. The only way to dampen the deadly blow suffered by the Italian political system would be to follow the invitation of the head of State and to accept the reality, to trace a line in the sand, turn the page and start again.

When a giant fall, he must not bring the whole house down with him.