Italy: Avanti, Silvio.(Silvio Berlusconi election in Italy ushers in a conservative government)(Brief Article)

The victory of Silvio Berlusconi in the Italian elections brings to office a conservative government in one of the leading European countries. This is exceptional in itself. Berlusconi's House of Liberty coalition has a majority large enough to ensure that he should be able to carry out what might be called a post-Reaganite agenda: reducing the state's hold on daily life, deregulating, cutting taxes, and controlling the illegal immigration now plaguing the country.

Italy is a law unto itself. In the old days, the Communists on the left and the Christian Democrats on the right formed blocs in nominal opposition, actually in one another's image, equally sclerotic, intolerant, and corrupt. Between them, they carved Italy up. The collapse of the Soviet Union ought in logic to have put the Communists out of business for good, but they regrouped through fast footwork. In an absurd paradox, it was the Christian Democrats who folded. Italy seemed destined to be in the hands of the Left forever.

Aware of the danger to their quasi-monopoly on power, the Left in Italy and elsewhere bad-mouthed Berlusconi in a campaign of concerted rumor- mongering and malice. His success seriously sets back their ambitions. Reorganizing the Right, and filling the void left by the Christian Democrats, he is establishing a two-party system more stable and equitable than the complicit arrangements of yesterday.

The achievement is highly personal. Sixty-four now, Berlusconi is self- made, reputedly the richest man in the country, among other things owner of three of the country's six television channels, and a range of financial services. Flamboyant, obsessive, prone to sentimentality and vulgarity, he is ...