Old masters maintain a stubborn grip on power

Silvio Berlusconi and Romano Prodi. Picture / Reuters

ROME  - "Time and age have no effect on me," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi recently boasted, showing off the wonders of a face-lift and hair transplant that make him look younger than his 69 years.

His political rival Romano Prodi also looks good for his 66 years - although he has not had any nips or tucks - and last December he ran his first marathon.

Meanwhile, Italy's 85-year-old President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi criss-crosses the country on a punishing schedule that would test a man half his age.

The trio's resilience is admirable, but no amount of cosmetic surgery or jogging can disguise the fact that Italy's political leaders are among the oldest in the world and show little inclination to make way for the younger generation.

The same phenomenon is reflected across Italian society, with an ageing elite guiding an increasingly aged population in a country with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.

A report prepared by the Rome-based think-tank Glocus says 54 per cent of public leaders in Italy are over 60, up from 46 per cent in 1998.

"The great Italian problem is our fear of our own resources and a lack of faith in the future," said Vera Slepoj, president of Italy's association of psychologists.

"There is a defensive system, there is no generational renewal, there is no courage to risk change."

The faces in the upper echelons of politics have barely changed in a decade, surviving crushing defeats, crises and scandals with ease.

Berlusconi and Prodi are challenging each other to become Prime Minister this year just as they did in 1996.

And just as 10 years ago, all the main leaders of the centre-right coalition parties are the same, including Umberto Bossi, the head of the Northern League, who suffered heart failure in 2004 and walks and talks with difficulty. It is a similar picture on the centre-left.

"It seems that when people get power here, all they are interested in is accumulating more power and holding on to it," said Filippo del Corno, a 36-year-old who started a campaign to promote young people in the arts world. "How can young people get interested in politics? Who can they relate to?"

If more proof were needed that Italian politicians were living in the past, barely a day passes without one accusing another of being Stalinist or Fascist. Berlusconi himself is particularly obsessed by the "red menace", regularly warning that the Communists are threatening to bury democracy in Italy.

Part of the problem is that many Italians seem in no hurry to grow up and the country promotes a culture that encourages people to look young but act staid.

A survey last year by British and US researchers said 82 per cent of Italian men aged between 18 and 30 live with their parents, against 43 per cent in the United States, mainly because they liked being spoilt by their mammas and papas.

A separate survey by the national statistics office found that Italian men became fathers at a later age than anywhere else in Europe, with Italian women the second oldest mothers.

"Here it is considered a success if you manage to keep children at home until they are over 30. In other countries this is seen as a failure," said centre-left leader Francesco Rutelli, explaining why the elderly held such sway in Italy.

Neither Berlusconi nor Prodi discuss retirement and there are growing cross-party calls for Ciampi to receive a second term as President, which would take him to 92, as the establishment struggles to come up with a viable alternative.

"Politicians are emperors who have created a monarchical system, where powers are inherited and consensus is the aim, not policy," said Slepoj.

- REUTERS