The devil returns to the Italian Parliament

Clemente Mastella is an almost mythological character in Italian politics.

Today it may seem only the mayor of Benevento, a small town in the Campania region.

But he was also a minister in the governments of Romano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi, the weaver of the plots that brought down the first one and, above all, a clear flash of the last gasps of the Christian Democracy (DC).

From its most decadent part.

Clemente Mastella, who defines himself as a "political passerby," has returned.

Or never left, he will say.

Now, together with his wife and in the midst of the chaos, he has become in charge of bringing together the group of senators who should replace Matteo Renzi's 18 parliamentarians in the Senate so that Giuseppe Conte's Executive can move forward.

The new parliamentary mayonnaise that would prevent the resignation of the prime minister will have names from Forza Italia, the mixed group and even Renzi's party.

In Italy they are called "responsible".

The Quirinal Palace suggests "builders."

In the rest of the world they are turncoats: the key to Italian politics in recent decades.

The reborn Mastella, who was also about to participate in the

, gives interviews at all hours.

It is known important.

But it is even more so because it explains the way of doing of Italian politics in the last decades.

It does not matter if the story of history insists on classifying the periods with solemn terms such as First, Second or Third Republic.

The

today is the same that served Giulio Andreotti to perpetuate himself seven times as prime minister or Silvio Berlusconi to ride four presidencies of the Council, despite all his scandals.

Renzi will take 18 senators and you have to find at least a fortnight to slightly exceed the 161 minimums.

Until the last minute, if one has something to offer before Monday, when Conte will submit to the motion of confidence (Tuesday in the Senate), anything and the opposite can happen in the Madama Palace, seat of the Senate.

It is the hour of the professionals of the corridors, of forgotten characters.

And the Italian Parliament is preparing to bring out the good dishes for the occasion.

"It is possible to form the new group," whispers one of the chosen ones into the phone.

Italy has had 67 governments and some thirty different prime ministers since the end of World War II.

This legislature is on the way to putting the third in orbit and, if no one remedies it, its prime minister will be elected again for the seventh time in a row without having passed the ballot box (the last one to gain that legitimacy was Berlusconi in 2008).

There are many reasons.

Perhaps the origin was the fear of the return of a monster like the one that Mussolini embodied.

The protection was a perfect bicameral political system that, in reality, generates blockages and instability (Renzi wanted to liquidate it with his failed reform).

The promiscuity between parties and the propensity to reach agreements of the Italians, in the antipodes of the Spanish character, make it worse.

Volatility, however, has grown in recent years.

The instability of the so-called First Republic (from 1948 to 1994) was an optical illusion.

It governed the DC and the pacts and the ruptures were piloted, remembers the political scientist and essayist Giovanni Orsina.

The crisis of political parties in the early 1990s came with the scandals of the

corruption case

, which toppled prime ministers like Bettino Craxi.

The structure that kept the country standing was blown up and was replaced by Berlusconi.

“And Berlusconi is the one who structured the political system, because he built the right around it and the left against it.

After that scheme, only pieces of parties remained, none central.

The

crisis

left Italy without parties, without Berlusconi himself and with a bizarre and unstable creature like the 5 Star Movement.

A party that rejects the party organization, the hierarchy and has a comedian at the top.

If you add all that up, you get the current Italian political system, which basically doesn't exist anymore.

And that's why you can do one thing and the opposite.

If there is no possible logic, only personal objectives remain ”, he points out.

Riccardo Nencini is another character that almost no one will sound like, but who should pay attention these days.

In the last elections he was presented with the brand of the extinct Italian Socialist Party.

He did not reach the minimum for his training to enter the Senate, although he did achieve a seemingly sterile seat.

And everything works.

Renzi was searching for a symbol when he split from the Democratic Party two years ago to group fled MPs under his new Italia Viva brand.

The chamber obliges to do so under a legal framework presented to the elections.

Otherwise, go to the mixed group.

And now Nencini, whom no one remembered, is considering being part of those responsible and perhaps taking his mark and leaving Renzi's party without an umbrella in the Senate.

It is his moment of glory: “Except for Obama and Tony Blair, I believe in these hours everyone has called me.

I feel like Ulysses on his ship, amidst storms, but with socialist coherence we headed to Ithaca ”.

The Greek island would be the past today.

The last heir

Giuseppe Conte is the last heir to the Christian Democrats.

The prime minister, a law professor who can rule with both the extreme right and the Social Democrats, knows that to resist and wait patiently is to win.

It now has the support of the two main parties of the governing coalition —Movimiento 5 Estrellas and the Partido Democrático— and with the total complicity of another of the great remnants of Christian Democracy: the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella.

He's making calls himself.

And in the halls of the Senate begin the meetings, the promises and even the recording of conversations of those who have something to offer so as not to be betrayed at the last minute.

For the next few hours, until Conte submits his position to a vote in the chambers and checks if his strategy has worked, Italy will dust off its old ways.

We will also see the return of characters like Silvio Berlusconi, who will not waste the opportunity to get a slice of possible support (between 2006 and 2008 he was convicted in the first degree for paying three million euros to corrupt a senator and overthrow the Prodi government).

Also of supporting political actors, who in exchange for the new jacket, will enjoy in the coming weeks - if the plan comes to fruition - ministerial positions or privileges.

And all this, sponsored by the 5-Star Movement, the party that won the elections with 33% roaring against the caste, invoking a change of era and promising that it would never have agreed with the old parties (it has already done so with almost all of them) .

The usual Gatopardo, that everything changed so that everyone remained the same.