Berlusconi's Panama visit will give him a break from troubles at home
By Our Man in Panama
Italy’s beleaguered Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi should be looking forward to his two day visit to Panama, if only to get a respite from media attacks.
Although he controls the largest share of the print and TV market in Italy, the remaining percentage don’t let him off the hook, and outside of Italy the European press is unrelenting.
Many of his problems are self induced, from the sex scandals to multi criminal charges, and his proclivity for comment that in other environs might land him in legal hot water.
Panama’s media will likely be kinder to him when he comes to participate in the official opening of work on the third set of locks for the Canal, which will dwarf the existing locks and become another wonder of the world.
An Italian company is the leader of the consortium that got the contract, and news that it has financial problems doesn’t seem to have ruffled too many local feathers. A storm in a teacup of canal water.
With Panama’s boosted credit rating, announced this week, and President Martinelli's promised open door policy for mining investment, all seems well for the good ship Panama.
But beware lurking pirates.
In the meantime Britain’s First Post has a few words to say about our July visitor:
Silvio Berlusconi is never at his best when the sometimes adoring Italian public turn against him. With opinion polls showing his party faces a whitewash in this weekend's regional elections, and his approval ratings at an all-time low of 44 per cent, he lashed out this week at Mercedes Bresso, who is standing as regional president for Piedmont.
"You know why Bresso is always in a bad mood?" the 73-year-old prime minister told a rally in Turin on Tuesday night. "Because in the morning when she gets up, she looks at herself in the mirror to put her make-up on and sees herself. And so her day is already ruined."
Quite why the bizarrely perma-tanned PM, who everyone knows has undergone plastic surgery and at least one hair transplant in the past, thinks he can get away with this sort of personal attack remains a mystery. Earlier this month, he tried the same thing on a partially bald Italian journalist, saying: "Your day is already ruined when you look in the mirror to comb your hair."
Bresso, who is standing as regional president for Piedmont in northern Italy, answered Berlusconi's jibe by saying it was in poor taste for two reasons. "One, I am always happy and you will find it hard to see a picture of me not smiling.
"Secondly, when it comes to make-up all I can say is that I use a lot less than Berlusconi. I am younger and much better preserved and I haven't had a facelift."
Piemonte is just one of the regions expected to be lost this weekend by Berlusconi's People of Freedom party - and it could go, not to the centre-left represented by Bresso, but to the far-right anti-immigration Northern League party.
The Northern League, which is so xenophobic that its policies include the right of coastguards to shoot human traffickers, is currently a minority member of Berlusconi's coalition government.
Shooting traffickers, now that’s a thought.
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