The G8 summit that Berlusconi is hosting is nothing more than small talk and photo opportunities. There appear to be no substantive issues on the agenda of this largely meaningless global summit. - AP/File photo

THE very fact that close to 40 heads of state or government are gathering this week in a small Italian town for what is officially billed as a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) suggests some sort of a discrepancy.

What’s more, no one is terribly sure exactly what they will be doing in L’Aquila, apart from exchanging small talk and posing for photographs. There appear to be no substantive issues on the agenda.

At the best of times, agreements and communiqués are negotiated by lower-level officials well before the presidents and prime ministers arrive to lend them their imprimatur. But lately even that pretence has been wearing thin. Besides, it is common knowledge that commitments made at such meetings are, more often than not, honoured in the breach.

A particularly egregious example of this trend is offered by the country hosting this week’s G8 summit, which has delivered no more than three per cent of the development aid it promised at Gleneagles in 2005, with further reductions planned in the years ahead.

However, this particular shortfall has had little to do with growing displeasure towards Italy within the G8 community, which has included hints that its place at the high table might be awarded to a less undeserving member of the European Community, such as Spain, which now boasts a higher GDP.

Officials from G8 member countries have been expressing their dismay over Italy’s lackadaisical stewardship of the summit in increasingly strident terms, albeit anonymously. Chances are the invitees were less than thrilled when Silvio Berlusconi hit upon the idea of staging the meeting in barracks outside L’Aquila, which was devastated by an earthquake last April — and remains prone to aftershocks.

The original summit site in Sardinia was decidedly more idyllic — although it could be argued that the shattered infrastructure of L’Aquila offers a more realistic backdrop for an increasingly outmoded, if not redundant, piece of global political architecture.

It is unlikely, though, that Berlusconi had this aspect in mind when he switched the venue. Nor can the decision reasonably be attributed to his determination to publicise the plight of earthquake victims — the level of his empathy was amply demonstrated by his comparison of them, in the wake of the disaster, with folks on a camping holiday.

This characteristically callous attempt at comedy did not spark a national scandal, largely because it was barely reported in Italy. Let’s not forget that Berlusconi was a media tycoon before he transformed himself, almost overnight, into a politician — and he has managed to fob off efforts by his political opponents to legislate against such obvious conflicts of interest.

At the same time, he is by no means averse to using legislative avenues to immunise himself against legal proceedings based on financial improprieties and ethically dubious deals. And the few Italian media outlets that he does not directly own or indirectly control are wary of his litigiosity.

It is not altogether surprising, then, that the broad Italian impression of Berlusconi differs somewhat from the rest of the world’s perception. A substantial proportion of them no doubt have a reasonably accurate idea of the man behind the perma-tan mask, but evidently not enough to keep him out of power. There appears to be a remarkably indulgent attitude towards sleazy and sordid aspects of his personal life. It’s unlikely many prime ministers would be able to politically survive the spousal charge of ‘frequenting minors’, yet Berlusconi’s popularity was barely dented after his wife, Veronica Lario, vented her disgust at her husband’s relationship with an aspiring model who happens to be younger than his youngest daughter.

When photographic evidence subsequently emerged of nude frolics at Berlusconi’s Sardinian villa, with a former Czech prime minister caught with his pants down, the Italian prime minister made sure the picture remained unpublished in his country. A Spanish newspaper proved less reticent, however, and the revealing snapshots inevitably found their way to the Internet. Mirek Topolanek was identified by the Czech media on the basis of a white rubber wristband, symbolising support for anti-Castro Cubans, which happened to be a gift from George W. Bush.

The photographs from May 2008 — the month after Berlusconi was elected to his third term as prime minister — were followed in short order by a series of claims that suggest such cavorting is almost a weekly occurrence at Berlusconi’s country residence, with his friends often flying in on official aircraft and the young ladies in attendance being paid for this presence.

Chances of Berlusconi suffering any adverse consequences in political terms appear to be minuscule, at least in the short run. Three Italian women academics last month issued an appeal to first ladies, suggesting that they stay away from the summit as a protest against Berlusconi’s unremittingly sexist attitude towards women. It appears to have gone unheeded, and it is unlikely that the host’s sexual peccadilloes will be a hot topic around dinner tables in L’Aquila this week.

However, there were in fact even stronger grounds for the G8 leaders and auxiliary invitees, rather than just their spouses, to boycott the summit. The host’s Nero-esque excesses no doubt offend many sensibilities (although it’s not hard to think of leaders who would be more inclined to envy their Italian counterpart), but what’s even more disturbing is his dalliance with the political heirs of Benito Mussolini. A month before last year’s elections, Berlusconi’s Forza Italia formally merged with Gianfranco Fini’s ‘post-fascist’ National Alliance, with the new entity known as Freedom People.

Both Forza Italia and the National Alliance were born in the early 1990s — the latter essentially a renamed version of the Italian Social Movement that openly upheld Mussolini’s as the nation’s greatest 20th-century statesman — when the Socialist and Christian-Democratic parties crumbled in the face of irrefutable charges of corruption and mafia connections.

The only large party that had survived the Clean Hands investigation intact was the Italian Communist Party — whose chances of electoral success in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War had been thwarted through direct CIA intervention. In the 1990s, it was the Berlusconi-Fini combo that muddied the prospect of a Communist-ruled Italy in Europe’s post-communist era.

Freedom People is part of a continental drift towards the right, with rising joblessness and broader economic uncertainty spurring xenophobia. It is incumbent upon responsible political parties to resist this drift. Berlusconi and many of his supporters have, instead, been flirting with racism and symbolically invoking the ghost of Italy’s fascist past. This sort of dangerous irresponsibility ought not have been rewarded by allowing him to host, on his own terms, a largely meaningless global summit.

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