Berlusconi - Once he had a daughter, a lover or what?

It took me a while to decide if it was appropriate to write about the latest Silvio Berlusconi saga, but considering how big story became, I believe I cannot resume myself in drawing my own conclusion.

On April 28th Repubblica, one of the most read left wing newspapers in Italy, published the news that Berlusconi went to the birthday party of an eighteen years old girl near Naples, Italy.

Nothing wrong so far, a prime minister still has his own private life, but when Repubblica interviewed the girl something rather strange happened.

The girl called Noemi Letizia referred to Berlusconi as ‘’ my papi’’.
My papi? If we take that papi means daddy, is Mr. Berlusconi the father of Noemi.

Well, Noemi already has a father Mr.Elio Letizia (pic.below). And who is he? He is an average guy, may be well off, but still an average guy. He has nothing to do with the high finance and the multimillion reality of Mr. Berlusconi, so what is going on?

Did Mr. Letizia agreed with forgiving his wife loose attitude towards married life? Or is there something more sinister? From the first moment, it came quite clear that Mr. Letizia had nothing to forgive to his wife, so what’s the deal?

In Berlusconi’s family the news on Noemi had an unsuspected effect. Berlusconi’s wife Ms Veronica Lario welcomed the news with the divorce papers.

And what Berlusconi himself did? He grabbed the opportunity to accuse the media and the opposition parties of building up a non existing case and of plotting against him at less then a month to the European elections.

So if the case in just bubble, what is the relation between Berlusconi and Noemi?

The media has speculated on different possible scenarios favoring the two spiciest options: father or lover of an under age girl.

Berlusconi, so far, hasn’t given a plausible answer.



Today, May 25th, in with CNN interview he said ‘’ I will speak out, I will explain exactly what the situation is. I will still have the Italians on my side and once again this accusation will act as a boomerang against the people that have started it."

So, does Mr. Berlusconi have a winning hand which will be reveled just before the elections or is this the beginning of Silvio’s decline?

We will see

Political PR disaster: Mr. Antonio Di Pietro

In this blog so far I have never pointed my finger to the PR disasters of the Italian politics and from today I will concentrate in presenting you what should be avoided if you want to be elected. My palette would offer a large number of candidates to the trophy of bad PR, but today I will concentrate on Mr. Antonio Di Pietro. Who is Antonio Di Pietro? He was, with no doubt, the most famous magistrate of the Milan team that starting from 1992 brought to justice over 2500 people divided between politicians and influential figures. They had to answer of illegal political financing and corruption. Those were the years of ‘’Mani Pulite’’ (Clean Hands) operation.

As Prof. Domenico Pacitti said in his interview for Just, ‘’ Di Pietro became a sort of overnight national hero’’. Italians finally had the hope and proof that something was changing and that our politicians were called to answer of their misconduct.

Unfortunately, when the political parties understood that Di Pietro was too dangerous to the establishment and that they had to stop him (27 criminal charges were raised against him and years later dropped), he decided to resign from his position to avoid to have any conflict of interests. He understood that probably the best way to fight against political parties was to reform them from the inside and on the 28 of march 1998 he founded his own political movement ‘’Italia dei Valori’’.

So what went wrong with Mr. Pietro?

It immediately became clear to the audience that even if he was a great investigator and prosecutor, unfortunately he was poor in the art of public speeches. Every interview or public speech given by Di Pietro became the target of satirical comments. He simply couldn’t speak Italian correctly.

TV, magazines, newspapers continuously asked ‘’ How can we be represented in the parliament by someone that barely knows the Italian grammar?’’

Some commentators even doubted he really had a University degree. The level of suspect got to such a high peak, he had to publicly show his degree in law during a TV show!

So did this experience teach him something?

Well, no, it didn’t. He even did something more controversial. He opened a blog in two languages, Italian and English.

And guess what? His English version of the blog was full of spelling and grammar mistakes.

Mr. Di Pietro became the target of a new wave of jokes that signed his reputation and consequently his political fortune for the future ahead.

Will Antonio Di Pietro learn the lesson this time? Will he be able to win the mass public approval he had at the time he worked as a magistrate?

I doubt it.

Emanuele Filiberto a safe bet?

Does the name Emanuele Filiberto ring the bell?

Probably the answer will be negative if the reader is not Italian or an historian. Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia is the nephew of the last king of Italy Umberto II. After the proclamation of the Italian Republic on the 2nd of June 1946, the King and his heirs were send to exile and sanctioned by three articles of the Italian Constitution they were forbidden to reenter in Italy. The male members of the Savoia family couldn’t enter the Italian soil until the 16th of July 2002 when the Berlusconi government voted the abrogation of the three Constitutional articles.
Vittorio Emauele di Savoia together with his wife and his son Emanuele Filiberto landed in Rome airport for the first time since 1946 on the 15th of March 2003.
The Italian parliament unofficially agreed in avoiding asking the Savoia to swore fidelity to the Italian Constitution as long as they publicly declared of having no intention to claim back the crown.
But why am I talking about the Savoia family and in the specific of Emanuele Filiberto? Perhaps if this was a gossip or TV blog the answer could be because Emanuele Filiberto was the winner of the 2009 edition of the Italian ‘’Dancing with the Stars’’, but considering the fact that in this space I always try to see the public relation side of political events, the answer is rather different. Emauele Filiberto di Savoia former crown prince is officially candidate to the European parliament with the Union of Christian Democrats (UDC).
Pier Ferdinando Casini leader of UDC and former allied of Silvio Berlusconi, understood the importance of riding the fresh and renewed popularity gained with his winning participation in Dancing with the Stars and the importance of creating ‘’buzz’’ around his party by candidating a public figure such as Emanuele Filiberto. Will it pay off?

If the school of Berlusconi taught him well and if the rules of Buzzmarketing apply to politics as well as economy, then the European Parliament will soon have Pince Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia as one of the Italian representatives.