Silvio Berlusconi between grandeur and weakness
Moments of strength and moments of abandonment. Gestures of heroism and weakness. Generosity towards one's country and concern for the "particular", as Guicciardini reminded us. The continuous resistance against the attacks of a militant judiciary. The attempt to modernize the political system, overcoming the swamp of the First Republic, towards the democracy of alternation. Gianfranco Polillo remembers Silvio Berlusconi
In England the death of the sovereign is greeted with the cry "the king is dead, long live the king". It may seem like a disrespectful cheer. And instead it is the last tribute to those who represent the personification of the nation. And at the same time the invocation in favor of his successor, called, however, to renew that indissoluble bond. This will hardly happen to Silvio Berlusconi, in his own way a sort of ruler in the difficult Italian situation. But also a figure that can hardly be replaced or replaced.
These are the first words that come to mind when faced with the fatal news of the sudden death of the founder of Forza Italia. Unexpected death in the face of the reassurances of the previous days. Hospitalization at San Raffaele, pure routine for health checks. Obviously this was not the case, but even in those moments the needs of political communication always marked by optimism prevailed. And we ourselves were fascinated by it, in the face of a dominant culture, such as the Italian one, most often oriented towards whining.
After all, life had been his friend. To the point of transforming him into a sort of King Croesus. The ability to turn everything he touched into gold: from business to sport; not to mention television or politics. To succeed where so many others had failed. Upstream of all the historical cultural backwardness of a country that had rejected the path of modernization for some time. Who had opposed, with guilty delay, the birth of color TV. Because, as both Enrico Berlinguer and Ugo La Malfa had theorized, its introduction represented the growth of unnecessary consumption. Instead, it was the path along which the great technological innovation of the third millennium would flourish in the following years.
Same tenacity in the political field. He will be the one who will not only block Achille Occhetto's "joyful war machine", preventing unimaginable drifts, but will favor the process of change of the old MSI, taking it by the hand to bring it into the fold of the democratic tradition. This with his right hand, while with the other he courted the "rib of the left", according to the old definition of Massimo D'Alema, ie the League of Umberto Bossi. Who will conquer not so much with political arguments, but with the human relationship that will be able to build with the leader of that party. Despite the latter's constant tantrums and his lengthy reprimands, which the "kaiser in a double-breasted suit" (copyrighted by Bossi himself) pretended not to hear.
Those were distant years, marked by his entry into the field (January 24, 1994), but terribly current if only two years later Luciano Violante, in his investiture speech as President of the Chamber, will feel the need to demolish an ancient taboo, and question the "reasons why thousands of boys and especially girls, when all was lost, took the side of Salò and not the side of rights and freedoms". A glimmer of national spirit, which the left will not then have the courage to develop, thus delaying the process of reconciliation which only today, at the end of the long parable of the man from Arcore, can be glimpsed on the horizon.
So far the merits, but today "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him", wrote Shakespeare. And then also the limits of its action cannot be overlooked. His irrepressible entrepreneurial instinct, ready to start business with anyone and anywhere. That partnership with Putin, still today, remains to be deciphered. Certainly Angela Merkel's Europe was going in the same direction: low energy costs through Nord Stream and large sales abroad. Especially in China. But all this does not justify. Was it just the naive belief, as Mario Draghi wrote, that democracy, like the stewardship, would follow the emergence of the free market? Or something different? However, the fact remains that in those years, starting from 2011, the mix of gas imports changed for Italy: from Algerian supremacy to that of Putin's Russia.
The truth is that Berlusconi was above all a politician. In strong harmony with his people. Able to manage, except for some more recent cases, complex parliamentary architectures. But much less attentive to the fate of the country. And, in fact, immediately after its fall, Italy, albeit with great difficulty, will be able to cope, at least in part, with some elements of the crisis. Which today stand out in economic situations that leave behind the image of the "great sick man of Europe" that the Economist portrayed at the time of the Second Republic. Results that would have been even better if there hadn't been Covid and the foolish policies of Giuseppe Conte, at Palazzo Chigi, and Roberto Gualtieri in via XX Settembre.
Lights and shadows, as you can see, as always happens in the life of each of us. Moments of strength and moments of abandonment. Gestures of heroism and weakness. Generosity towards one's country and concern for the "particular", as Guicciardini reminded us. The continuous resistance against the attacks of a militant judiciary. The attempt to modernize the political system, overcoming the swamp of the First Republic, towards the democracy of alternation. The desire to transform the archaic vestments of Italian foreign policy into something more similar to those of other Western countries. All elements that contribute to highlighting the just merits of the character.
However, each of us will carry with us the memory of Silvio Berlusconi, as we saw or knew him. And we are no less. We have never shared those who wanted to criminalize him, just because they didn't understand or didn't share his style or his way of life. Honor, however, to merit, but also a pinch of disappointment between what could have been. And instead it wasn't.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/silvio-berlusconi-2/ on Mon, 12 Jun 2023 17:53:06 +0000.