Still a puppet master
Silvio Berlusconi is keeping Italy on tenterhooks
VITRIOLIC slanging matches in current-affairs talk-shows on Italian television mirror the country’s politics. It is more turbulent than ever after the supreme court upheld the conviction for tax fraud of Silvio Berlusconi, formerly prime minister. In the eight weeks since the court confirmed a four-year jail sentence (which will in effect be just one year of house arrest or community service), Italians have been subjected to more verbal mudslinging than usual. And they have been kept on tenterhooks about the survival chances of Enrico Letta’s fragile coalition government.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Still a puppet master”
From the September 28th 2013 edition
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