“Last year [2003], Italy’s highest court acquitted Mr Andreotti of charges [that] he ordered the Mafia killing of a journalist in 1979, in a separate Mafia-related case.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3746322.stm

That is fortunate as it would have added an extra dimension: Mr Andreotti served as prime minister seven times and is now a life senator. Another past prime minister was not so fortunate:

“Former Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi, who has died in Tunisia aged 65, was a key figure in post-war Italian politics and the upheaval of the bribery scandals of the early 1990s which sent him out of power.

“He was Italy’s longest-serving post-war prime minister, heading two successive administrations between 1983 and 1987, a remarkable achievement in a country known for a high turnover of governments.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/610659.stm

As for Italy’s economy, this OECD Economic Survey of Italy 2005: Policy Brief is illuminating on the main issues:
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/21/40/34882431.pdf

In an interview with Henning Klüver, author and journalist Claudio Magris explains Silvio Berlusconi’s recipe for success with an example: “We had a family living above us, the typical Mr and Mrs Clean. They kept their home spic and span, but threw their trash onto the street. If there’d been a genocide in our stairwell they couldn’t have cared less. (…) For years this social strata was controlled on the one hand by the Democrazia Cristina, and on the other by the Italian Communist Party and the unions. It was never its own free political subject. Then Berlusconi came along and declared: you are a subject, free to vote for me! In doing so he pulled out every stop, violated all the rules of decency and brought about this strange cultural climate which is frightening even so many of his own people. These are the people we should address. It was a major mistake of the Left just to show them scorn.”

I last line rings true for my own stupid country