Tag: Forza-Italia

Berlusconi’s death: How will Italy’s real-life Succession play out?

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Berlusconi had two kids from his first wife, and three from his second. They will all inherit the empire the media tycoon built from scratch.

Five kids, grown in the shadow of their powerful, wealthy, ruthless father — a man whom the nation looks up to, who’s built a media empire that has hypnotised the entire country, and shaped its politics and destiny.

Five kids who have been raised with a sense of pride for the name they bear, but who have been haunted by one question their whole life: who’s going to be worthy of their father, who’s going to succeed them?

What sounds roughly like the plot of the popular TV show ‘Succession’ is actually the real-life story of Silvio Berlusconi’s five children, who now have to deal with the cumbersome legacy their father left behind.

Much like Logan Roy, the moody tycoon of the HBO show, Berlusconi came from a modest family — a clerk and a housewife — only to become one of the richest and most successful businessmen in his country.

His career began in construction in the 1970s, and continued in the world of television, which he completely revolutionised creating the country’s first private national channel, Canale 5. This would later be incorporated into Mediaset, a network comprising 3 of the 7 national channels — and a powerful instrument for an ambitious man who loved to be loved.

High on the success of his business investments, Berlusconi entered the world of politics, which he dominated for the next 30 years, covering three terms as Italy’s prime minister between 1994 and 2011 amidst scandals, corruption charges, and controversies. He created his own party, Forza Italia, which is currently in the right-wing coalition governing the country.

When Berlusconi’s health started turning for the worse on Monday, Marina (56) and Pier Silvio (54), from the media mogul’s first marriage to Carla Elvira Lucia Dall’Oglio; and Barbara (38), Eleonora (37), and Luigi (34), from his second marriage to Veronica Lario, rushed to his side.

They were there when the larger-than-life politician and businessman who had divided Italy’s public opinion for the last three decades died at the age of 86 on the same day, brought down not by his excesses and bravado, but by leukemia.

Berlusconi’s media empire and his party will now be passed on to them, his five legitimate children. All of them hold a stake in Fininvest, the multi-billion euro media company that the former prime minister created from scratch and which is currently the largest shareholder of Media for Europe, MFE.

The group owns the television network Mediaset and Mondadori, one of Italy’s biggest publishing houses.

Who will take over Berlusconi’s media empire?

Berlusconi’s children each hold a 7.65% stake in Fininvest, according to Italian news media. The media mogul controlled about 61% of holdings in the company, which will now have to be divided among his kids.

But while cynicism, ambition and greed can be learned, the same disposition and hunger for success, and the ability to achieve it that characterised Berlusconi, cannot be inherited. It’s the same lesson that Logan Roy’s kids are taught over and over in ‘Succession’.

None of Berlusconi’s children, who mostly shied away from the media spotlight, have the same energy that their father was able to bring to the Italian public. But at least one of them appears to have the same business instinct: the eldest child, Marina Berlusconi.

The 56-year-old is widely seen as Berlusconi’s natural successor, and people familiar with the matter told Reuters that she is, in fact, going to be inheriting her father’s media empire, though Berlusconi never formally named her his successor.

Together with her brother Pier Silvio, who was put in charge of Mediaset, Marina has been directly involved in running her father’s companies since he entered politics in the early 1990s. She had served as deputy chairperson at Fininvest for nine years and she’s been on the company’s board since 2005.

The three kids Berlusconi had with his second wife, on the other hand, have always been kept at a distance from the family’s company. Barbara and Eleonora have never been given any high-profile executive roles within either Fininvest or Mediaset, though Barbara once took a senior role in running the then-Berlusconi’s football club Milan until it got sold off in 2017.

Luigi, the youngest son, is a board member at Fininvest, representing his family’s side interests in the company together with Barbara. Eleonora is likely the least interested in her father’s legacy, considering she has chosen to give up her last name and goes under ‘Bartolini’, the real name of her mother Veronica Lario, born Miriam Bartolini.

Under Italian law, Berlusconi’s children have a right to inherit two-thirds of his wealth in equal parts — in Fininvest’s case, 8.13% of stakes in the company each. The remaining third can be disposed of as the deceased pleased — which means that Berlusconi could have decided, in his will, to distribute the remaining 33% stake in Fininvest to Marina and Pier Silvio, giving them more power in the company.

As of Tuesday, Berlusconi’s will has not yet been opened or made known to the public.

What is the future of Berlusconi’s party, Forza Italia?

An even bigger question mark surrounds the issue of who will inherit the lead of Berlusconi’s party, Forza Italia. Many, even within the party, fear that Forza Italia might be dead without Berlusconi, its members scuttling to other right-wing parties like the League of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.

Giovanni Miccichè, a former Berlusconi ally who left Forza Italia to form his own party in 2010, said on Monday Forza Italia had died with the former premier.

But ultimately, the decision to keep the party alive belongs to Berlusconi’s kids, who are inheriting the responsibility of keeping Forza Italia going without the man who’s been its uncontested leader since its creation, and who’s funded the party for the past decade.

“The symbol of Berlusconi’sparty, Forza Italia, now belongs to his heirs – his children,” tweeted Daniele Albertazzi, a politics professor at the University of Surrey, in the UK.

“They are also the ones who would have the means to keep financing it – as [Berlusconi] continued to do throughout the years. Being a personal party, it is now part of [Berlusconi’s] legacy: just like his companies.”

However, Albertazzi said, “the party “was already in terminal decline” before Berlusconi’s death. 

“[Berlusconi’s] presence meant it could still attract some votes for a little longer, from people who had got used to supporting it during its golden years,” he tweeted.

“Even if [Berlusconi’s] children decided to keep it going, who’s there to attract votes now?” he added. “Not only he never chose a successor, but there is literally NO-ONE within it today – let alone his children – who has the vision, charisma & knowledge to take this huge task on and try to steady the ship.”

But Albertazzi thinks that Meloni, the current prime minister, will try to keep the party afloat for her own interest. “I would not be surprised if Meloni stepped in to steady the ship and lend a hand, as Forza Italia reps start running around like headless chickens fearing for their future,” he wrote. 

“In the immediate future, she does not need the aggravation of the party destabilising the govt by sliding into civil war, as its reps realise they ain’t returning to Parliament…” he added.



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Berlusconi’s death is Europe’s first populist’s final triumph

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Unlike today’s autocrats who make grim threats against the institutions of the rule of law, Berlusconi brushed them aside in a light-hearted and smiling manner, with jokes, silk neckerchiefs, and catchy ditties — an authentic made-in-Italy product, ready to be exported, Giorgio Fruscione writes.

On Monday, Silvio Berlusconi departed from this world differently from the way he first appeared in our lives when he entered our living rooms through his TV stations, virtually sitting by our side while we ate dinner.

His 1994 public address declaring his “discesa in campo,” or descent into the field of politics, saw him make a further promise to be among the people, with the people, and for the people.

But for Berlusconi, the nearly three decades in politics would be thirty years he always lived above us.

His death was, perhaps, the only real thing he had done “as one of us”, one of the mantras of his political life, the one that in Italy gave rise to two malign trends of our politics: populism and anti-politics.

It is not completely true to say that with the death of Berlusconi, an era ends. The era that began with Berlusconi is more alive than ever.

A list of grievances amid the grieving

The populist rhetoric, the opening of the door and leaving it ajar for the extreme right, the hatred for independent journalists, the intolerance for judges, misogyny and measuring the value of women by the length of their skirts, rampant tax evasion and flirtations with autocrats halfway around the world — these are stronger today than they were in the early 1990s when the fear of the spectre of communism was still expanding.

Having come into the field to ward off the arrival of the communist enemy that had never been in power in Italy — nor would ever get anywhere near the offices in Chigi and Quirinale — Berlusconi used his economic power and a media monopoly to promote his own political initiative as a sacrifice in the name of the collective good, while the opposite was true: opportunism for personal gain.

This is not the place to recall his entrepreneurial background prior to his arrival in politics but rather the moment to consider Berlusconi as the precursor of authoritarianism as we know it today — that of Victor Orban, Donald Trump and, to a degree, even Vladimir Putin.

How much did normalising Putin cost us collectively?

It is no coincidence that Berlusconi considered the Russian president a great friend to the very end, swapping wine bottles even during the war and in defiance of sanctions.

After all, Berlusconi ended the “real one,” the actual Cold War — this, according to him — with the Pratica di Mare agreement between Russia and NATO during the 2002 Rome summit.

The handshake between George W Bush and Putin at the summit actually normalised relations between the West and Moscow, whose political methods became acceptable after that. So did Berlusconi’s.

When in 2008 Berlusconi mimed a machine gun in response to a journalist who dared to ask Putin a question, it was not just a joke — after all, Russian independent journalist Anna Politkovskaya had been murdered in Moscow only a year and a half earlier — but further legitimisation of an authoritarian system with which the West deluded itself into thinking it could live with by importing gas.

What we do in life echoes in eternity

The ripple effects of his influence on the political events of today are aplenty. And many of the political actors behind them are the spiritual heirs of Berlusconism, especially outside of Italy.

Isn’t the approach with which Trump is defending himself against ever-growing accusations by calling them “farcical” and politically motivated similar to that with which Berlusconi used to attack judges by calling them ”red togas”, a provocative reference to Roman Empire’s magistrates who held both judicial and executive powers?

Isn’t the control over state media and the main private channels by Victor Orban in Hungary a model set by Berlusconi, who ruled through three public television channels in parallel with his three Mediaset channels?

Aren’t attacks against independent journalists the prerogative of leaders who dream of their own “Bulgarian Edict”, a watershed moment for media freedom in Italy in 2002 when, during an official visit to Sofia, Berlusconi’s criticism got journalists Enzo Biagi, Michele Santoro and comedian Daniele Luttazzi removed from the air at the public broadcaster, RAI?

Doing what one wants and selling it as good for the people

Today, those mourning Berlusconi are mainly his followers and not his actual voters.

It is rather those leaders all over the world who, using the self-made man spiel, convey the same precarious assurances and illusory successes to the people.

All that just to leave them with higher public debt, tax evasion that remains legitimised and almost incentivised, and wages that stopped rising just as Berlusconi descended to the field to make us all better off.

But unlike today’s autocrats who make grim threats against the institutions of the rule of law, Berlusconi brushed them aside in a light-hearted and smiling manner, with jokes, silk neckerchiefs, and catchy ditties — an authentic made-in-Italy product, ready to be exported.

Berlusconism, after all, is doing what one wants and what is convenient for one’s business, finding a way around rules and institutions, and then propagandising all this as a universal and sustainable social and economic model.

It is the heavy-handed imposition of the private over the public, a form of liberalism where the increase in social divisions has been compounded by scorn towards the other gender.

It is the notion of a country-slash-enterprise ruled by a tycoon for the prime minister where women have been reduced exclusively to objects of pleasure, going to the parties at his villa San Martino in Arcore or dancing in prime time as various showgirls on his TV channels whose ratings corresponded to their appearance.

‘A great statesman, for better or worse’

In a country where, culturally and habitually, death turns anyone into a heroic martyr, the end of Berlusconi will not put an end to his way of doing politics, but it will monumentalise him in people’s memory as “a great statesman”.

It will historicise him, making him a man who “for better or worse” contributed to the country’s history.

And finally, it will humanise him, showing his Mediaset presenters’ live tears and flowers near the hospital in Milan where he passed away as the tangible sign of a man who was loved by the people not in spite of, but precisely because he stood above them, serving them for his own personal interests.

That is the social and political model that is now more entrenched than ever in Italy and beyond. And that is why Berlusconi’s death is not the end of an era, but his actual triumph.

Giorgio Fruscione is a political analyst and a freelance contributor to several domestic and international media outlets. He is a Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), with his analyses focusing mainly on Western Balkans politics and geopolitics.

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