Berlusconi: Undone by La Dolce Vita?

Silvio Berlusconi holds an amazing record of political longevity. Three G-8 summits have been held in Italy in the last 17 years (1994, 1999 and 2009). The U. S. was represented by Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama; Great Britain by Prime Ministers Major, Blair and Brown; France by Presidents Mitterrand, Chirac and Sarkozy; Germany by Chancellors Kohl, Schroeder and Merkel; and Italy by Prime Minister Berlusconi. His political opponents are desperate—and they say so in these words—for “any means” to remove him from office, as they have very little chance of defeating him in a general election.

Can such a man be brought down by sex—in the land of the Latin lover? It may well happen.

On April 6, he will face a panel of three female judges in Milan on two charges. The first is having sex with an underage prostitute. The second is for abuse of power, by arranging for the release from prison of the Moroccan woman, “Ruby”—with whom he is accused of having illegal sex when she was 17—who had been arrested on an unrelated charge of theft. If convicted on the abuse charge, Mr. Berlusconi would face both a jail sentence and removal from office (the prostitution penalty is three to 36 months' imprisonment).

The prime minister denies both charges. He and Ruby both deny intimacy (alleged to have taken place at the now infamous “bunga bunga” parties—said to be the contemporary version of Roman orgies—at his villa outside Milan). Mr. Berlusconi has said he believed Ruby was related to Egypt's former President Hosni Mubarak, and that his call to the police was thus a matter of state, not an attempt to cover up their relationship. (Ruby's biography is a bit hazy—she's Moroccan but was born in Egypt.)

There was a time, nearly a generation ago, when Italian editorialists lamented the lack of sex scandals atop their society, and even expressed bitterness that the British were the winners in the category. But that was before Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, who fled the country in 1994 to avoid judicial condemnation for corruption, and Mr. Berlusconi had overcome the sex scandal gap. Today's Italian press, which routinely publishes photos of leaders and their paramours in various stages of public and private undress, often laments a lack of suitable morality.

Last Sunday, crowds of women gathered in piazzas across the country to demand Mr. Berlusconi's resignation, and female editorialists have attacked him viciously. To be sure, both the crowds and the writers (many of whom were on the sinner's side when Bill Clinton faced a similar challenge) came from the political left. But the public shares a general disgust with their leaders. In a recent poll, roughly a quarter of the electorate voted for “none of the above” when asked to express a preference for one of eight potential presidential candidates.

Some have remarked on the fact that all the judges are women, which is bad news for the prime minister. But this was not the result of maneuver. With the exception of its president, the Fourth Penal Section in Milan is entirely female.

More worrisome is the political composition of the national judiciary, which has been overwhelmingly leftist for decades. Judges are appointed by committee, so it's a self-reproducing bureaucracy. Imagine Dick Cheney standing trial in front of a court from the Yale Law School faculty.

Mr. Berlusconi's will be an “immediate trial,” since an investigative magistrate found the evidence compelling. Anyone who has participated in an Italian judicial proceeding will squint at the phrase “immediate trial,” since a typical court case, plus the inevitable two appeals, drags on for many years, as have Mr. Berlusconi's several others. He has so far beaten them all, from fraud to mafia ties—some on the evidence, others on technicalities. The latter promises to be his first line of defense in April.

His attorneys have indicated that they will challenge the competence of the court to try him, arguing that only a ministerial court can rule on the charge of abuse of office, and that a court near his residence should try the prostitution case. If the abuse-of-office charge goes to the ministerial court, the Chamber of Deputies, Italy's lower house in parliament, would have to approve it. This is unlikely, as Mr. Berlusconi's coalition holds an absolute majority. That would bring an end to those proceedings.

There are other legal moves available to him and his enemies, as well as purely political operations. The left is, of course, demanding he resign at once.

But they haven't convicted him yet, and the calls for resignation suggest anxiety among his opponents. My guess is that the trial will not be quite as “immediate” as some are hoping, and no savvy Italian is going to bet the villa on a guilty verdict.

Mr. Ledeen, a scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is author of the forthcoming “Virgil's Golden Egg and Other Neapolitan Miracles” (Transaction).