Hail Silvio...

Dear Sir,

In the business life section of financial times, Luke Johnson aptly quotes Plato "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors". Further in the article he explains how different are the professions of business and politics which makes it all the more difficult for a businessman to join politics.

In this background, FT's Lex Column is the only newspaper in UK which objectively analyses Silvio Berlusconi's political life. I say objectively because the failures like political corruption, weak growth in South of Italy, too much tax-evasion and organised crime are mentioned. In the same breath, it mentions the positives like, "the country has held together, Italian banks avoided the worst of the credit bubble, growth of gross domestic product has remained slow but fairly steady, inflation has been moderate, the ratio of government debt to GDP has increased less than in most rich countries and Italians are still buying almost all of the government’s debt". Most of all, during tough times, he did not resorted to budget populism.


The fact of the matter is, Silvio Berlusconi has achieved politically more than Tony Blair or Maggie Thatcher in the UK and in business more success than Rupert Murdoch.

But the biggest fact missed by or mis-represented by the media in the UK is that he has been democratically elected not once or twice but thrice by the Italians, has been ruling Italy for almost 8 of last 11 years and has been the premier 3 times. That itself deserves some respect.

Hail FT, where even publications like Economist have failed not to mention the disappointing BBC and tabloid(ish) Murdoch stable.

Regards,

Pradeep Kabra