Since the first peace years after the second war, Italy has led in Europe for the restoration of democratic institutions. Helped by the electoral law which provides for proportional representation, Italy was democratically governed most of the times by coalition governments which allowed the formation of a strong Administration and an equally strong and independent Judicial system. At the same time Trade Unions found fertile ground to strive and together with the Administration and the Judicial sector established what for Italy one can call “the system.”

A team of strong decision makers, not elected but self-reproduced from within the “system” ruling in parallel and complementary to the political, when the political was weak or in transition, a kind of “state within the state.” For half a century, Italy was mostly governed by multi-party governments where centre-right and socialist parties in coalition with smaller parties were succeeding each other at high speed with long intervals of service governments. In this context, the powers of the “system” were growing together with corruption which became an endemic phenomenon. Corruption has been a highly complex relation of interweaved interests involving businessmen, financiers and politicians, with a “scent” of Mafia. It is worth noting that the common denominator which acted as the “glue” in keeping together the elements of “system,” has been the leftist “conscience” of its members, an attitude developed after the fall of fascism by many formerly faithful to Benito Mussolini. With the years, the “system” became stronger and stronger, at the expense of the political leadership and in beginning of the nineties corruption had reached African levels.
In 1992, starting from the investigation of a small scandal involving Mario Chiesa, a minor figure of the Italian Socialist Party of the late Bettino Craxi (who a few years after died in self-exile in Algeria), Public Prosecutor Antonio (Tonino) Di Pietro (now Member of the European Parliament) launched the operation “Mani Pulite” (clean hands) which ended-up turning Italian society upside-down. Businessmen, financiers and politicians were taken to court and jailed and a new situation emerged in Italy.  The entire affair got the code name “tangentopoli” from the word “tangente” which in broad Italian translation means also “bribe.”

Since 1992, in a kind of what one might see also as a personal vendetta, Di Pietro targeted, among many others, business tycoon Silvio Berlusconi who despite the wave of judicial investigations on his business, in 1994 became Prime Minister of Italy. Di Pietro, an over ambitious personality has never managed to corner Berlusconi and for unknown reasons, left Justice to become a politician.  Di Pietro continued his hunting on Berlusconi also under his political capacities. While as a Prosecutor Di Pietro was highly respected and extremely powerful, as a politician proved of small calibre and his presence has been always marginal. However, he managed to maintain alive the “struggle” against Berlusconi. Indeed, since 1992 until today, Berlusconi has been invited to testify over 2,500 times while he spent over 200 million Euro for lawyers.

Before “tangentopoli” Italian elected politicians enjoyed, during their mandate, immunity from judicial prosecution which could be revoked only by the Parliament. This is still a basic rule in all EU Member States. When “tangentopoli” exploded this privilege was revoked by law for the “mani pulite” team to be facilitated in its investigations. Since 1992 many years have elapsed, order was restored in Italy and political and financial life has turned back to normal since more than a decade.

After the political victory of Berlusconi in the April 2008 election, the Italian Left moved the ground of confrontation to juridical grounds and the Berlusconi government passed a law, known as “Lodo Alfano,” (named after Minister of Justice Angelino Alfano who introduced the act) granting immunity from prosecution to the four highest political offices in Italy (the President of the Republic, the two Speakers of the Houses of Parliament and the Prime Minister). In practice the legislation in force before “tangentopoli” was brought back to force.

Earlier this month, however, the Italian Constitutional Court declared the Lodo Alfano unconstitutional. Since then, Italy has entered into a confrontation, between the ruling political party elected one and a half year ago, the Left and the Judiciary. It should be added that in the background of this confrontation, an element that cannot be overviewed is the ongoing business war between Silvio Berlusconi, owner of the Mondadori media group and Carlo De Benedetti, owner of the Espresso group and business associate of Rupert Murdoch.