What a place to be in!

On one side, a Tunisia almost on the brink of a civil war. On the other hand, an Italy suffering the excruciating embarrassment – again – of seeing its prime minister embroiled in a girlie scandal.

Tunisia: the aftermath

You will find the latest on Tunisia after Ben Ali escaped the people’s justice on the news pages.

I refer to a blog on a Tunisian webpage that has been there, on an off, for years, urging Tunisians to rise up in protest http://www.tunisiaonlinenews.com:

And these are comments taken from The Economist’s blog pages after Ben Ali escaped to Saudi Arabia:

David-M wrote: Jan 15th 2011 5:58 GMT

Let the Arab world from Morocco to the Gulf revolt! It’s young & bubbly.

PS Did any expert here forecast this? Many were so happy that Tunisia is a pro-western showcase of success, peace & tranquillity. Blah blah blah

Poker34 wrote: Jan 15th 2011 7:05 GMT

For the good of Africa, I will be praying that the people of countries like Egypt, Mozambique, Angola, Ivory Cost, Swaziland, Congo, Sudan and others learn from the determination of the Tunisian people and fight for their rights by getting rid of the evils leading them to extreme poverty, while those same evils enrich themselves through highly and visible corrupt practices. Chaos is the last step before organization, and I am glad the Tunisians are now getting through that.

emmess74 wrote: Jan 15th 2011 9:30 GMT

Could 2011 be the Arab world’s 1989?

Many countries in the Arab world would appear to be around similar levels of social and economic development as the countries of Eastern Europe (and Latin America and parts of Asia) that turned democratic around that time.

The West will probably be not afraid that a democratic Tunisia will turn Anti-Western. History would suggest that countries that have transitioned from pro-Western dictatorship to democracy have stayed so, so are not a threat.

The threat would come from Islamists infiltrating the democracy movement which is obviously overwhelmingly secular such as in Iran in 1979. A lesser threat would come from the failure of the democrats to win a second election due to expectations that are too great meaning the country backsliding to less perfect democracy but not dictatorship.

Marbelli Feliz wrote: Jan 15th 2011 9:57 GMT

Is this perhaps the beginning of a larger revolution, for example from Sahara to Egypt, passing through Morocco, Algeria and Libya?

zet23 wrote: Jan 15th 2011 11:01 GMT

@Emmes74

There may be some similarities between Tunisia in 2010 and Eastern Europe in 1989, however there’s at least one big difference. Eastern European countries were under the Soviet Union’s control for 40 years and when those countries were allowed to have free elections, they showed their will to join the West not only because it was a club of rich countries but also (or maybe above all), the citizens of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and others felt they had shared the cultural, historic roots with Western Europe (and the USA).

The Arab world belongs to a different culture; therefore, if the people of Tunisia (and other Arab countries) are allowed to vote in free, democratic elections, it is unlikely they would choose the West.

The girlie story

On to the other side of the sea, and Berlusconi’s woes, from La Repubblica’s summarizing of the events.

The minor detained at Police Headquarters

The new judicial storm that is hitting Silvio Berlusconi has the face of a young Moroccan girl, Karima Ruby el Mahroug, known as Ruby. She is at the centre of what the magistrates of Milan have reconstructed as a case of juvenile prostitution and abuse of office that calls into question the Premier and his by now well-known parties in Arcore.

It all begins the night between 27th and 28th May 2010. Officers attached to the Police Headquarters of Milan arrest the minor accused of theft by a female friend with whom she shares an apartment. The police officers find Ruby on the street and bring her to their offices located on Via Fatebenefratelli. They discover that she is 17½ old (her date of birth being 11 November 1992) and that no one answers at the address she has given.

It is at this point that, in these same offices, a telephone call is received from Palazzo Chigi (the prime minister’s office) asking that the girl be released and entrusted to Regional Council Member Nicole Minetti (the Premier’s former ex-dental hygienist and currently under investigation for abetting prostitution). The girl is promptly released

Things are not so simple. An investigation focuses on the phone calls made from Palazzo Chigi to obtain the ‘release’ of the girl. It thus emerges that Ruby went to Arcore several times from 14th February to early May.

On 21 December 2010, Berlusconi is entered in the register of those under investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Milan for abuse of office and in connection with juvenile prostitution. The news is made public only two days later, together with an invitation addressed to the Premier to appear before judicial authorities.

Ruby, however, denies everything, while admitting to just sporadic meetings without a sexual background. The public prosecutors, instead, when poring over the printouts of the calls made on the girl’s cell phones, discover that she was in Arcore on many weekends coinciding with the presence of Berlusconi in the villa.

“My nights in Arcore”

It is an investigation (the hypothesised offence is abetting prostitution) where the Italian Premier is not under investigation; those being investigated are: Lele Mora, Nicole Minetti and Emilio Fede.

To the public prosecutors Ruby rules out having had sex with the head of government, just as she confesses having lied to Berlusconi. “I told him I was 24 years old and not 17. Nicole knew that I was a minor and so did Lele Mora”.

However, Ruby tells of her three visits to Arcore, of the parties at the villa and of the dozens of young women, both famous and unknown − many of them escorts − who took part in them.

The girl puts a novel expression on the court records: “bunga bunga”. This is the term referring to the host’s habit of inviting some female guests, the most willing, to an erotic after-dinner interlude. “Silvio (I call him Silvio and not Papi as he would like to be called) told me that he’d copied that expression − “bunga bunga” − from Gaddafi: it’s a rite of his African harem.”

Later, when she went to Milan, she adds: “Emilio calls me and says I’m taking you out. I don’t know where, he doesn’t tell me with whom or at whose place. He comes to pick me up with a blue car. I get in, we zoom off escorted by police car of the Carabinieri toward Arcore (Berlusconi’s house). I am introduced to Silvio. He is very polite. There are a score of girls, but as for men − just two, Silvio and Emilio (Fede).

(Ruby names the guests. The complete catalogue of the female world of Silvio Berlusconi is there: TV hostesses of greater or lesser fame, stars on the rise, some very famous, starlets on the wane, some television stage assistants, more than one escort, two female government ministers, single girls and girls apparently very much engaged. So far, no names have emerged in public.)

“We dined,” she recalls, “but I didn’t stay overnight. After supper I left. By 2:30am I was already home. With a black and white dress by Valentino and Swarovski glasses, given to me by Silvio.

“The second time I went to Arcore was the following month. Straightaway Silvio tells me that he would be pleased if I stayed there all night. Lele had already mentioned that he would ask me to. She had reassured me: ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be the object of sexual advances, nobody will embarrass you.’ And that’s the way it was. We had supper and afterwards I participated for the first time in bunga bunga.

(This onomatopoeic “game” going beyond a sense of the grotesque is described by Ruby to the appalled public prosecutors of Milan with great vividness, even with excessive material vividness. She dwells on the modalities of the sexy, male chauvinist ritual that was related by Muammar Gaddafi and imported amid laughter to Arcore. Ruby specifies what was done and who did it − a long list of famous and popular names on television or in Parliament.)

“I,” Ruby goes on, “was the only one dressed. I watched while I served a drink (a Sanbitter) to Silvio, the only man. Afterwards, they all went for a swim in the covered swimming pool; I wore white shorts and top that Silvio found for me and immersed myself in the hydromassage tub.

“The third time I went to Arcore was for a dinner, which was a much, much calmer event. When I arrived Silvio told me that he would introduce me as Mubarak’s niece. At table, she maintains, were Daniela Santaché, George Clooney and Elisabetta Canalis.

Is Ruby telling the truth? Or is she lying? That is the burning issue facing the investigators. To what extent is Ruby’s account credible?

To get to the bottom of it, the investigation must first of all demonstrate that the minor really met Silvio Berlusconi and really was at Arcore. Ruby offers what appear to be incontrovertible confirmations.

She displays the jewels received as a gift from Silvio Berlusconi: gold crosses, necklaces, earrings, diamond-studded watches (Rolex, Bulgari, Dolce&Gabbana) and ordinary watches with the inscription “It’s a good thing that Silvio is here” or with the Milan football club logo, haute couture clothing and a German car. Ruby claims to have received over €150,000 from the head of government (in cash over a three-month period) and, above all, a promise. “Silvio gave assurances that he would buy me a wellness centre and he invited me to spread the word that I was Mubarak’s niece.”

There is no doubt that something appears amiss: despite Berlusconi’s legendary generosity, so much cash, so many jewels and promises seem disproportionate to the commitment of just three meetings.

But some circumstances seem direct confirmations of Ruby’s words. On 14th February her cell phone is “positioned” on the “satellite cell” of Arcore. A pair of jewels in her possession − this is also true − were purchased by Silvio Berlusconi. Investigations also have verified what verged on the incredible, namely that the young female guests of Villa San Martino, just as some of those under investigation, use the bunga bunga slang expression of Arcore in their talks.

After the Casoria party and the revelations of the meetings with Noemi Letizia, a minor at the time, and after the discovery of the circle of go-betweens that fill his palazzos and villas with women for pay, such as Patrizia D’Addario, this new progressive unveiling of the disorderly life of the Premier, and of his private failings, again summons up the weakness of the Cavaliere. The theme calls into question, today as yesterday, the credibility of the institutions.

And we here?

Stuck in the middle of such two countries, we share a bit of both, but then again we do not share so much of both.

We have an angry and embittered population, angry at the rising prices and even more at the Cabinet decision to award itself a huge wage increase. But Friday’s march in Valletta was very orderly and Joseph Muscat’s ‘concrete plan’ against cost of living nothing that cannot be lived with.

Nevertheless, the PN administration, coming apart at the seams, is now living well past its sell-by date.

On the other hand, we at least do not have such an embarrassment for a premier as our northern neighbours. Nor, as far as one can see, anywhere in the higher reaches of government. But that may well be because we do not look properly at all levels of administration.

If we now think that Tunisia was so unsuspectingly close to revolution, are we so sure that Berlusconi will remain long in power in the face of all this? Or that, with him having gone, Italy does not descend into anarchy?

We, after all, have the same cultural set-up as our Italian neighbours. We pride ourselves we do not have a Mafia like they have there, but are we so sure? And there may also be a flipside to our current anguish on divorce or no divorce: could it be the repression in us setting in?

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