On the guardian there is an article about about Berlusconi, where also Rocco Siffredi is questioned about the RubyGate and the possible effect on the number of votes.
If I get the article correctly it seems that Rocco is saying that Berlusconi will not loose vote for this behaviour. I’m always amazed when people can predict how and what people will behave in an election that is not yet issued, basing their judgement on one fact.
More over, in a youtube video, I remember that Rocco said that Berlusconi is ill and that he can help him. So I don’t know if he changed his opinion or the article is a bit imprecise.
However the number of voters for Berlusconi is a straw argoment.
Berlusconi has a pack of voters whom will vote for him no matter what. This is more like a cult problem than an actually political judgement of what the govern has achieved. This people exist and it will be stupid not to acknowledge that, however this is a fraction of all the voters in Italy.
A third of the country didn’t vote at the last elections. They didn’t vote neither for the right wing or for the left wing. Lack of proper representation it seems to be more the cause of this then not being interested in the politic of the country. What I would like to make clear is that there is a huge pool of possible voters, which could be called to get rid of Berlusconi.
But this is not what I wanted to write about. I would like to comment this sentence:
Salvatore, a blacksmith, said: “I would give my daughter a slap if she went to a party at Berlusconi’s, but I still vote for him since I approve of his politics.”
I really would like to understand what is this politics that he his talking about. The Berlusconi’s politics, in the last 14 years, was only escaping from the law using the power to create new law that will favour him (ad personam), or to change existing law. That’s not politics, that’s tilting the table.
So the number of people that actually vote for Berlusconi are either thinking he is a model or they are convinced he is doing good the job. The last part are completely recoverable because it will be easy to demonstrate that the government is unable to do its own job and its completely stopped.
There is a massive amount of people that could throw away Berlusconi. The only trouble is that the left wing did not yet find the way to organize those people in a coherent way and be able to challenge him.
Several different way are being tried, like http://www.prossimaitalia.it/. We will see.