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Several governments has failed to as have courts trying to do their job – but it is about time for a joined-up, co-ordinated effort to bring the buffone to his untergang.

The easiest would be to have the Italian people vote against him and then the new government take action. In fact the Italians have voted against him on several occasions despite him controlling the media to an extreme degree. But then the governments have failed to take action – the last from 2006 would not interfere with his conflict of interest as his empire was of italian national value – the buffone must have laughed when he heard and saw that!

So even if the Italian people voted against him the likely of any action being taken is close to zero. So what are the options? There are a couple of obvious ones – for now these will be the only ones we present here:

1. Petition:

The Lisbon treaty offers the possibility of bringing a petition to the commissioners if one million have signed it. The petition would be on conflict of interest, sure, and a million signatures should be easy to get. That the commission would take action is however doubtful. There are toughies in the commission like first Vice-president Vivian Reding but then again her boss, Durao Barroso, isn’t and would probably not push anything forward. Occassionally he wants to show that he is tough so maybe he would do it in this case – remains to be seen. Petition first!

2. European Court of Justice.

Lisbon treaty or not – the European Court of Justice has ruled that the Italian broadcasting system does not abide the EU law and therefore Rete 4 should give up its frequencies to Europa 7. However, this is simply not happening – so lawlessness brought to EU-level. Bad. European Court of Justice should be reminded to follow up on the ruling.

I imagine that that is nothing special in certain circles in Italy but in the rest of Europe it is a bit like meeting someone who denies holocaust (think of it – how many Italians you know or have met and how many have said they vote for the buffone?). Most Berlusconianos are aware of that and will hence not tell foreigners, like me, that they actually vote for him. However, speaking Italian I sometimes manage to gain their trust.

Having now spoken to quite a few of them and having given it a bit of thought I believe we can put buffone-freaks/Berlusconianos into three categories:

1. The deniers

There are those who have been so brainwashed by now that they actually begin to believe that the man is not guilty of anything, that the media is not on his side, that the judges in Italy are all communists, that his accomplices do not manipulate media coverage, that passing legislation in parliament allowing for false accounting is not in his interest, etc. These are the closest to the holocaust deniers and are hard if not impossible to get thru to.

2. The ultra-pragmatists

Then there are those who admit everything: that he has mafia connections, has masonic lodge business, has committed bigscale the tax fraud, pass false accounting legislation to save his own ass, that he bribes judges, embezzles, that he uses the state to serve his own interests, etc – and then say that there is no alternative!

Now, you can choose to love to hate the other Italian parties – but accept all of the above and yet still vote for him takes a level of forgiveness that would leave even Mother Teresa gabing! The ultra-pragmatists basically say that the buffone is all he is charged for being and devil-like – but the others are the real devil (of whom you cannot accuse the same). To me that is not pragmatisme – that is taking it to a whole new level – ultra-pragmatisme.

3. The menofreghisti (the ‘I-couldn’t-care-less’)

This group has given up figuring out whether the guy is guilty, self-serving, immoral, or the like, but appreciates his entertainment value. They find it funny when he flips the bird, when he starts singing, when he keeps Angela Merkel waiting, when he shouts at politicians in the European Parliament – he constitutes a rebel for them – somebody who is just as indifferent to the establishment as they’d like to be if they had the chance.

The above serves mainly as an observation. However, it might be worth considering the above when trying to win over buffone-freaks and when targeting campaigns against the buffone. None of the three groups are easy to get through to. However, on the surface, the third group – the menofreghisti (the ‘I-couldn’t-care-less’) – would be the easiest. You would just need a bigger clown than the buffone (and there are people who do that for a living so that should not be hard to find). However, if a politicians does more clownacts than the buffone he might recruit this segment but he will alienate others (unless he, of course, have hundreds of people working for him on television channels assuring us that this kind of behaviour is normal!).

However, this is only one part of the problem – even more serious is that the other Europeans – and I think primarily of the politicians in the European Parliament and the Commission – have failed to address the biggest political embarassment in Europe since World War II. Let us hope that changes soon.