UNPREDICTABLE SILVIO, everything and its opposite

After a long period of silence, Berlusconi has come back. In doing so, as usual, he took the stage as a protagonist. In the last couple of days, he created a sequence of controversial events which have settled Italian and international media agendas. Resuming them, will help to get a complete understanding about Berlusconi’s role in the Italian political future.

Friday, October 26, Berlusconi broadcasted a video-message, as the one where he announced his engagement in politics in 1994, where he officially stated his choice to resign from front-line politics. He informed Italians he would have not been the leader of his party at the up-coming elections of April 2013 and he invited the new party’s leaders to organize primary elections in order to decide who will take his political inheritance. Finally, he concluded his monologue, highlighting the important effort that Monti’s government has been taking in order to reform Italy and its main vices.

Saturday morning, October 27, the Court of Milan condemned him for the first time after 14 years, in first trial, for tax fraud concerning his television company Mediaset. He was convicted to 4 years of jail (but as a consequence of a law approved in 2006 they will be remitted to one year), to a 10-million-euro fine which he has to pay back to the National Tax Office and to 5 years of disqualification from public offices. The reason was founded in the trading of American series television’s rights of broadcasting which, apparently, were sold first to off shore companies and then intentionally overprized in their selling to Mediaset. As the trial took almost six years before getting to its judgment (it was repeatedly blocked due to the pro-Berlusconi laws that the Parliament approved during his term) and as the prescription term will expire in 2014, it seems very complicated the trial will make it to get its Appeal judgment and, in case, the Constitutional Court’s one.

The same day in the late afternoon, October 27, Berlusconi organized a press conference and announced, as a consequence of the Court of Milan’s verdict, his personal duty to keep his front-line position in politics in order to fight the biased political magistrates and to avoid that defenseless citizens could suffer what he has been suffering from unfair judgments. He underlined, then, that the aim of the trial’s verdict was not to condemn the presumed illicitness of the facts he was accused with but to condemn personally his political engagement, arguing his statement remembering that, not long time ago, the Court of Rome and the Constitutional Court have acquitted him judging the same matter. Furthermore, he explained the urgency of his new engagement in politics, highlighting the European top leaders’ neo-colonial approach towards Italy and accusing them to be the reason of his political defeat. Finally, after a day from his professed support to Monti’s government, he attacked it as well, announcing that he and his collaborators were discussing the possibility of withdrawing their confidence to the Government. In doing so, he exposed the country to the threat of early elections and to the consequential financial speculation on the Italian economic instability. (Berlusconi’s party is the one assuring the majority to Monti’s government in Parliament.)

Despite media interest in Berlusconi’s senile delirium (due to his attachment to power) which lead him to his confused statements, he acted his play in front of an empty theatre. Indeed, Italian electorate (except his faithful supporters’ minority) has, much before the Court of Milan’s judgment, condemned his figure as an irrelevant one in the public sphere and in the Italian political future. Rather, his recent messages had the political class as their real target. On the one hand, they were addressed to the changes concerning the internal structure of Berlusconi’s party, his leadership’s inheritance and the party’s ability to take distances from his patriarchal shadow. On the other hand, they gave an advantage to the Democrats’ coalition. Indeed, the Democratic Party, which without Berlusconi has been forced to present for the first time his concrete reforms’ platform to the country, has got now, with Berlusconi’s re-engagement, the chance to gainfully surf back on the only keynote issue of their last 15 years program: anti-Berlusconism.

According to recent polls, whichever decision Berlusconi will take about his new role in politics and however the trial will evolve in the Appeal Court and in the Constitutional one, this will not deeply influence the Italian electorate who, already, perceived him as a dead political leader. Reading data makes indeed clear the real aim of Berlusconi recent media-play. He wanted to avoid the tragic end of his political career and the juridical consequences he will soon face in the trials where he has been accused.

A movie directed by Nanni Moretti in 2005, “Il Caimano”, prophesied the end of Berlusconi’s political career due to a judgment which would have condemned him to jail after years of impunity. What nowadays has changed from it, is that the ending scene of the movie, where Berlusconi’s supporters attacked frontally with stones and fires the judges who pronounced the verdict, will not anymore happen. Today, Berlusconi’s attempt to use politics in order to avoid jail does not have any more a great appeal between the majority of the Italian electorate, proving in this instance the insignificance of his theatrical representation of the last days. Berlusconi’s lonely battle has, so far, no other meaning than a last personal attempt to escape the sanctions of his fraudulent and deceitful 18-year term. Anyway, however the Italian political scenario will be re-shaped by Berlusconi, his political isolation in the society is the greatest achievement the country could have got in order to implement his rehab.