We don’t pay much attention to Italy here in Washington, but in London the Daily Telegraph is reporting that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says he will step down at the time of the scheduled 2013 election. As the article explains, he faces various legal challenges. This would bring to an end a tempestuous political career that has lasted nearly 20 years.
In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Christian Democratic party and the obsolescence of the opposition Communist party—as I like to say, both were based on faiths that few Italians shared any more, Catholicism and Communism—Berlusconi, one of the richest men in Italy and owner of its private television networks, formed a new center-right party, originally called Forza Italia (that’s a soccer cheer), which allied with the regionalist Northern League.
