For a few days next July, the port of Genoa is likely to be the focus of international attention as it hosts the annual "G8" summit of the world's major industrialised countries. It may well be that the role of master of ceremonies will fall to media tycoon and current centre-right opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi, who, incidentally, acted as host at the last G7 meeting held in Italy, in Naples in July 1994.
If opinion polls and expert predictions are to be believed, Mr Berlusconi is about as good a bet to win next year's Italian general election as Manchester United are to lift the English Premiership title. The opposition leader and pundits alike believe that, after five years of conflictual and internally divided centre-left government (which threw up four different governments and three prime ministers), the Italian electorate is likely to vote strongly in favour of Mr Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, headed by his Forza Italia party but also comprising the ex-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale (AN), Senator Umberto Bossi's Northern League and at least one ex-Christian Democrat splinter group.
Opinion polls and recent electoral results would suggest that such a grouping must be odds-on favourites. In regional elections last April, the centreright pulled off a stunning victory, winning eight out of 15 regional presidencies (the centre-left had held nine out of 15), while the Forza Italia party emerged as the strongest in the country with approximately 25 per cent of the vote, as opposed to 21 per cent for Democratic Left (DS), the former Italian Communist Party and main centre-left government party.
The centre-right cause, too, seems likely to be helped by the bitter internal feuding that has marked not just the past five years of centre-left government but also the choice of candidate for prime minister.
When Massimo D'Alema resigned as prime minister in the wake of the regional election defeat, he was succeeded by the experienced ex-Socialist Giuliano Amato. The latter, who did well as prime minister at an especially difficult moment in 1992, soon made it clear that he had every intention of throwing his hat into the ring when it came to choosing the left's election leader. Mr Amato, however, had to be persuaded by senior figures in both the Popular Party (ex-Christian Democrat) and the DS to haul off in favour of the younger, better-looking and more telegenic Mayor of Rome, Francesco Rutelli. It seemed that senior figures on the left had made a pretty basic calculation. They reckoned that they would have no chance if they went into the election under the leadership of 62-year-old Mr Amato, a man whose close ties with the late disgraced socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi make him seem like one of yesterday's men. With 46-year-old Mr Rutelli at the helm, looking handsome and sounding confident, the left on the other hand might just make a fight of it.
Like current European Commission president Romano Prodi, the man who led the centre-left "Olive" coalition to victory in 1996, Mr Rutelli faces an almost impossible task in forming a campaign platform and defining a government programme that will hold together a coalition ranging from ex-Christian Democrats to unrepentant Marxists. As we write, the two "wings" of this coalition appear sharply divided on a range of issues including immigration, pension reforms, education reforms, employment initiatives, institutional and electoral reform, and much else besides.
In contrast, Mr Berlusconi gives the very definite impression that he and he alone is in charge on the right. His personal charisma, his smooth electoral salesmanship and his recent refound alliance with the Federalist Northern League should provide the platform for a return to the prime minister's office.
Yet Mr Berlusconi too could face internal coalition problems, similar to those which brought down his 1994 government after just seven months in office. On that occasion, it was the maverick Senator Bossi who pulled the plug and, given the Northern League leader's whimsical unpredictability, a repeat performance cannot be excluded.
Mr Bossi could yet prove a major liability for the centre-right. His enthusiasm for the ideas and policies of Jorg Haider, leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, not to mention his anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant tirades of this autumn, make him a figure who is looked at askance by Italy's senior European partners, not to mention by Mr Berlusconi's other coalition partner, Gianfranco Fini of AN.
Nor does Mr Fini's own party inspire total confidence across the centre-right coalition (not to say outside Italy). While few doubt the seriousness of intent with which Mr Fini has set about ridding his party of its fascist past, some wonder about the success of his efforts.
Certainly, the newly-elected Lazio regional president, AN's Francesco Storace, hardly did his party any favours by attempting to block the August "Gay Pride" march in Rome and then proposing that school history text books be rewritten on the grounds that those currently in use teach a "Marxist view of history".
AS WE prepare for what is sure to be an uncompromising (i.e. dirty) electoral battle in the New Year, it might be worth reflecting on three controversial figures who died in 2000 and who all, in their very different ways, helped shape the destiny of post-war Italy - former socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi (aged 65), Mediobanca chairman Enrico Cuccia (92) and Mafioso boss turned state witness Tommaso Buscetta (71).
The leader of the longest-serving Italian government of the post-war era (1983-1987) and the man who built the Socialist party into a national force, Mr Craxi will be remembered less for his undoubted political skills and more for his involvement in Italy's infamous "Tangentopoli" or "Bribesville" scandals. When he died in self-imposed exile in Tunisia last January, he was recalled not so much as a bold and pragmatic leader, capable of suspending the scala mobile (the automatic wage index), or of forcing a stand-off with US president Ronald Reagan over Arab terrorist Abu Abbas, or indeed of renewing the Concordat with the Vatican. No, he was widely recalled as the man who, more than anyone else, symbolised the endemic corruption in post-war Italian politics.
Banker Cuccia's passing seemed to mark the end of an era. In his role as Mediobanca chairman since 1947, Cuccia exerted an almost total control over the Italian private sector, weaving together a spider's web of interconnecting companies largely financed and administered by the salotto buono or establishment elite of Italian "family" capitalism, including companies such as FIAT, Olivetti, Pirelli, Montecatini, Edison, Assicurazioni Generali. In the immediate post-war context, it is no exaggeration to suggest that Cuccia had an important role in Italy's remarkable economic revival. In the era of globalisation and the euro, however, his behind-the-scenes capitalism has given way to one that is, as Mr Amato put it shortly after Cuccia's death, "more open, more based on the market and more competitive".
If Cuccia and Craxi were, to a large extent, already yesterday's men when they died, the same cannot be said of Buscetta, the mafioso whose extensive testimony provided a major plank in the prosecution's platform at the celebrated MaxiProcesso in Palermo between 1986 and 1987. Up until his death, Buscetta remained a valuable and valued source of information for Mafia investigators, thirsty for knowledge in their ongoing and uphill battle against Cosa Nostra.
Like a certain level of "political instability", organised crime remains something of a perennial Italian problem. We will be hearing more about both in the New Year.