ANALYSIS:'IL CAVALIERE", the Great Communicator, is back. The emphatic victory of media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi in last weekend's Italian general election not only represents a remarkable personal triumph for the 71-year-old billionaire but it may also mark a watershed in Italy's long and difficult passage on the road to becoming a modern bipolar democracy, writes PADDY AGNEW.
Modern? There will be those, of course, who argue that there can be nothing modern and perhaps little democratic about an election that is won by the country's richest man, head of a vast commercial TV group and owner of a €7.6 billion business empire that also includes advertising, insurance, food, construction, publishing, AC Milan football club and much else besides.
Then, too, non-Italian commentators remain astonished that Berlusconi's much-documented judicial problems seem to do him no harm at the ballot box.
In at least 10 different investigations (and sometimes trials) over the last 12 years, he has been accused (but not convicted of) corruption, bribery of judges and tax inspectors, false accounting, money laundering, tax evasion and illegal party financing.
In Ireland, sustained allegations of financial irregularities were enough to prompt the resignation of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern earlier this month. In Italy, Berlusconi has not only survived much more serious allegations but he has also seen close associates such as Cesare Previti and Marcello Dell'Utri sentenced (the former for bribery of judges and the latter for Mafia association) and still lived to tell the tale.
The Italian electorate, it seems, is no longer (if it ever was) scandalised by such matters. Berlusconi, too, may well be absolutely right when he affirms, as he did on Monday night, that the vexed question of his "conflict of interests" between the roles of media tycoon and prime minister is a "problem of interest to only 2 per cent of Italians".
With his constant smile, his hair implant, his face-lifts and his tanned complexion, Berlusconi might seem frivolous. Yet in his ability to survive both physical adversity (prostate cancer and heart problems) and political reversals to win his third term of office, he emerges as a deadly serious politician.
It may well be true that his victory this time owes much to the unpopularity of the short-lived and unstable government of his predecessor Romano Prodi. It may well be that disaffected voters on the left stayed away from the polls (there was a 3 per cent drop in overall turnout) or indeed opted to vote for Berlusconi's ally, the federalist Northern League.
Such considerations, however, do not take away from the fact that these elections seem to have enshrined another sea change in Italian politics, a change that owes much to Berlusconi and arguably even more to his major opponent, Walter Veltroni of the Partito Democratico (PD). Both leaders opted, by and large, to "go it alone" and in the process they eliminated extremist factions on both the right and the left.
Veltroni's decision to offload troublesome, radical left allies such as Rifondazione Comunista, the Italian Communists and the Greens (allies who in the past had caused no small amount of grief to Prodi) was rewarded with a 38 per cent PD share of the vote, while his ex-allies failed to win a single seat in either house.
Likewise, Berlusconi had insisted that his major ally, ex-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale (AN), dissolve itself into his new Popolo Della Liberta (PDL) party. Those AN hardliners who rejected this takeover ran under their own, extreme right banner, La Destra, and like the radical left, they too paid a heavy price, winning not a single seat in either house. The same fate befell nearly all the other smaller, one-issue parties, with Giuliano Ferrara's anti-abortion list failing to make even 1 per cent.
Of the smaller parties, only the ex-Christian Democrat UDC, formerly allied to Berlusconi but on its own at these elections, did respectably, claiming 5.7 per cent of the vote, with 36 deputies in the Lower House and three senators.
Since 1994, critics have complained that Italian politics are bedevilled by unstable government coalitions made up of too many parties. This weekend's elections seem to have resolved at least one of those problems, by reducing the number of parties in both houses. Likewise, even if the Northern League holds the balance of power in the senate with its 25 seats and can be expected to use such a position to pursue its federalist agenda, Berlusconi will almost certainly find ways and means to accommodate his allies.
Berlusconi's own, controversial 2005 electoral law (proportional representation plus a majority bonus) may have finally achieved its twin aims - namely stable government and the simplification of the party system. In that sense, this weekend's elections may represent an important step forward.
Nor did it come as a surprise to hear Berlusconi suggest yesterday that his 2005 law needs but minor changes for the future.
For Berlusconi's opponent, Veltroni, this weekend's defeat was not all negative. His intelligent campaign and the fact that the new formation PD returned a higher vote than the sum of its original constituent parts, suggest that both Veltroni and the PD will be around for some time to come.
Berlusconi will definitely be with us for the foreseeable future.
Many commentators believe that as he comes to the end of this forthcoming five-year term of office, he will set his sights on the office of state president, which brings with it a seven-year stint. Could it be that this weekend's result has heralded a further 12 years of Berlusconi?