The definitive conviction of Silvio Berlusconi for tax fraud last week – the confirmation by the country's highest court of a four-year prison sentence which had been effectively reduced to one year – should really bring down the curtain on this opera buffa worthy of Scarlatti or Rossini. But like one of those trick musical false endings composers sometimes use to tease audiences, the Berlusconi show seems to go on, and on. The old dog refuses to lie down and die. Over the weekend some 2,000 supporters rallied to their hero to hear him declare, on the verge of tears, "I can promise you. Here I am. I am staying here. I won't surrender." His acolytes are demanding an unlikely presidential pardon.
Italy’s longest-serving postwar prime minister, and one of the country’s richest men, once called himself “the politician most persecuted by prosecutors in the entire history of the world throughout the ages”. He had seen off dozens of legal prosecutions and weathered a sea of scandals since he stormed into politics in 1994 with his Forza Italia to fill a void left on the right by the eclipse of the discredited Christian Democrats.
But the road has been running out. In June he was sentenced to seven years in jail and a lifetime ban on public office for paying for sex with an underage prostitute and abusing his office to cover it up (currently on appeal). He is also appealing a conviction for publishing the transcript of a leaked wiretap in his paper, Il Giornale, for which he got one year in jail. In October, a court will rule on whether he should be tried for allegedly bribing a senator to switch political sides. He denies it all.
Act Four, Scene Five ... There is a real prospect that our 76-year-old hero, too old for jail, will now serve a year under house arrest in one of his palatial homes. But the likelihood is that he will continue from there to exercise dominating political influence on his People of Freedom party (PDL) members in the coalition cabinet led for the last three moinths by centre-left Prime Minister Enrico Letta. If, that is, Letta can contain the dissidents in his own party who are demanding the exclusion of the PDL and may well force a general election.
His immediate concern, however, ahead of Italy’s August closedown for holidays, is securing support for a package of economic measures that are due to be voted on in parliament this week. That vote looks secure.
Berlusconi’s commitment over the course of the weekend to the continuation of the coalition has helped reassure markets and push down bond yields, but that very fact is testimony to the continuing influence of the old chancer. “What drives us,” he told supporters, “is not our personal interests. Always the interests of everyone and of our Italy come first.” A proposition some will find hard to swallow.
Still no sign of the fat lady, or the curtain...