Berlusconi is back (again)

Silvio Berlusconi, on his way out of the Milan hospital after overcoming covid-19, last September PIERO CRUCIATTI / AFP

The prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, stepped in front of the TG5's cameras, gulped and called it "Il Cavaliere Berlusconi."

In one go.

As if he didn't want to think too much about it, he dusted off a disgraced honorary title in Italy after all the scandals and political disqualification the four-time prime minister went through.

The same man who had just saved the face of the Government with the last of his cunning moves.

Silvio Berlusconi always comes back.

At 84, he keeps Forza Italia's vital signs to a minimum, but manages to revive her when necessary.

The party has around 7% of support in the polls.

However, it retains a large group of parliamentarians at the service of the experience of the oldest and most cunning gambler in Italian politics.

On Thursday he offered to unravel a critical situation in the government and convinced his right-wing coalition partners (Hermanos de Italia and La Liga) to vote in favor of expansive budgets that contemplate widening the deficit.

An unusually unanimous vote in times of pandemic.

A triumph.

The play, a three-way political carom, shows that the Cayman is still in shape.

The return key is usually similar.

Berlusconi's center of gravity is somewhere between public and private interests.

In this case, the Conte government needed your support to carry out an increase in the deficit of 8,000 million euros that would open the tap of the resources necessary to face the post-pandemic.

At the same time, Berlusconi was in a very delicate political and business situation.

On the one hand, its coalition partners are on track to gobble up Forza Italia and make it too irrelevant to keep pulling it out of the UCI from time to time.

On the other hand, and this issue is crucial, Mediaset, the jewel in the crown of its business empire, is going through a moment of fragility that has exposed it as never before to the elements of the markets.

France's Vivendi has been trying to join the Italian game for months, gobbling up Berlusconi's company and getting closer to TIM, Italy's largest telephone operator and owner of the single telephone network.

The tycoon sent signals to Conte through his best man, his old chief of staff and head of the engine room of four governments, Gianni Letta.

If they wanted political stability, it was convenient to sit down and talk.

So on the other screen, by chance or not, the negotiations to help Mediaset were thriving.

The first signs came with the appointments of the board of directors of the independent body that regulates public television (Agicom).

The 5-Star Movement (M5S), whose identity was based for years on criticizing the promiscuity between television businesses and Berlusconi's politics, swallowed the former

placing one of his trusted persons there and drafter of the so-called

(2003), one of the rules that benefited you the most in the past to expand your business.

The Executive, later, approved an amendment that protects Mediaset against the interests of Vivendi, a kind of shield to protect Italian companies in the midst of a pandemic.

The movement provoked monumental anger from the Frenchwoman.

And also from a sector of the M5S, which considers it a heresy.

“It's the most old school part.

But, in reality, a huge Italian company that employs thousands of Italians was helped.

It is not necessary to identify it only as Berlusconi's company ”, points out a deputy from the M5S.

The magnate, however, also had to resolve the political problems in his coalition created by growing electoral weakness.

He warned his partners that if they did not support the expansion of the government deficit, Forza Italia would do it alone and they would be portrayed as the parties that hindered the recovery.

The parliamentarians of the Brothers of Italy were enraged.

But the threat of rupture - some sources indicate that he went further and threatened to leave the group, although in Forza Italia they deny it - had effect and the opposition en bloc gave its support to the government on Thursday.

Never seen.

Return to centrality

Renato Brunetta, deputy for Forza Italia, Berlusconi's right-hand man for years, believes that it is the beginning of a change: “The right must be plural, European, guaranteeist and liberal.

How Berlusconi created it and managed it for 25 years.

Thinking of a right led by sovereignists, populists and anti-Europeans is a contradiction.

What happened on Thursday is the return to centrality ”.

A speech for the right that begins to permeate an electorate somewhat tired of the nationalist populism of the League.

Berlusconi, in the twilight of his career, has unexpectedly returned to have a good hand.

The government, made up of four parties, is once again registering seismic movements.

The Democratic Party and Italia Viva (the formation of Matteo Renzi) demand a reshuffle of the Executive and to rebalance it.

New cracks will open until the first lifeguard arrives.

The month of August will begin in Italy what is known as the “white semester”, the six months prior to the election of the new President of the Republic.

During that period, the law establishes that the Executive cannot fall nor is it allowed to dissolve the chambers.

But Conte's journey to the other shore, when he will have to face the most complicated part of this crisis by stabilizing the country, will be very long.

And the Cayman will be on the prowl.