Berlusconi Clings to Last Miracle

It has been one of the most remarkable political adventures in modern Europe. Silvio Berlusconi came into office promising miracles, and for five eventful years he has led a government that has often seemed, if not supernatural, then certainly unreal.

Where else in the world had a leader who was also his country's richest citizen? Or one who owned half its television? Where else in Europe was there a leader with an underground mausoleum which he had had built for himself and his closest associates? Or one who believed, and said: "There is no one on the world stage who can compete with me."

Its eccentricities were not confined to its leader. Earlier this year, one of Mr Berlusconi's ministers ripped open his shirt on television to reveal a T-shirt bearing one of the Danish cartoons of Muhammad that prompted riots throughout the Islamic world. That little jape sparked another riot in Libya, where Italian TV is widely viewed, in which 14 people lost their lives.

As that incident showed, there were always two aspects to Mr Berlusconi and his government: the entertainingly eccentric and the downright disquieting. If they have lost power, it will be because their campaign has made voters more aware of the latter than the former.

But if they retain office, there will be many in Italy ready to ascribe it to the darker side of Mr Berlusconi's operations. Opposition parties clearly hinted last night at worries about the way the count had been handled.

Leaving aside such suspicions, the closeness of the result would seem to endorse the controversial tactics adopted by the prime minister in the run-up to the vote. His aims were twofold: to reduce abstention by keeping the temperature of the campaign at boiling point and to focus attention exclusively on himself.

The theory was that this would lure Italy's silent, or apathetic, rightwing majority in an easily understandable battle dominated, not by issues, but by personalities. So he scandalised and swore. He entertained, blasphemed and offended. And it worked. Between 85% and 86% of the electorate cast a vote, reversing a 20-year trend of declining turnouts. But his success was won at a high cost, because the rancorous campaign has split the country as never before in modern times.

It may have been amusing at the start of the campaign for Mr Berlusconi to have compared himself to Napoleon and vowed to give up sex until polling day. But many of Italy's practising Roman Catholics began to lose their sense of humour when he likened himself to Jesus Christ.

Over the years, Mr Berlusconi has extracted considerable political mileage from being what his supporters often term an "anti-politician". His refusal to fit into the straitjacket of protocol and decorum could sometimes even be endearing.

At one EU summit, he declared: "Let's talk about football and women" and then, turning to Gerhard Schröder, who has been married four times, said: "Gerhard. Why don't you start?"

But Italians are sensitive to anything they fear might impinge on their standing abroad. When Mr Berlusconi was caught making an obscene gesture behind the head of the Spanish foreign minister, the reaction at home was one of horrified condemnation. Several of his attention-grabbing gambits in this campaign fell into that category, as when he insisted that Chinese communists had boiled babies.

That remark ushered in a darker phase in which Mr Berlusconi's mask of impish bonhomie slipped to reveal the troubling egotist beneath. His attempt last week to bulldoze himself on to one of his own TV channels underlined his determination to use his media power for political ends. What is more, it took place against a background of growing paranoia. Italians had heard Mr Berlusconi's claims, that he was the victim of a witchhunt by leftwing prosecutors. But in the final stages of the campaign the cast of those conspiring to bring about his ruin grew to include newspaper reporters, TV journalists, even bankers and industrialists.

The effect appears to have been mixed. Incomplete results confirmed a trend stretching back at least two years which has seen Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party lose ground. It was set to win around 22% of the vote, compared with 29% in 2001.

But because the main opposition party, the Left Democrats, also suffered, Forza Italia was set to emerge as Italy's biggest party. That will be an important card in Mr Berlusconi's hand in the tricky games that lie ahead and which is going to have to play with his allies as well as his enemies.

By stamping his outsized personality on an intensely personal campaign Mr Berlusconi may have won crucial votes. But he also deepened the already passionate feelings of those who dislike him and all that he represents. When he entered politics 12 years ago, he said that one of his aims was to unite his fellow Italians. His long government has left them troublingly divided.

The charges

1993

Illegal party funding charge

Timed out

1994

Bribing tax inspectors

Acquitted

Bribing Torino chairman to let AC Milan have forward Gianluigi Lentini

Timed out

1995

False accounting involved in purchase of film production company Medusa

Acquitted

Tax fraud linked to land purchase

Acquitted

1997

Tax fraud linked to Spanish TV channel TeleCinco

Case suspended

1998

Aiding and abetting Mafia killings

Dropped

Bribing judges amid takeover battle

Timed out

1999

False accounting over illegal party donations

Acquitted after Berlusconi government changed law

Bribing judges in takeover battle

Timed out

2003

Tax fraud

Timed out

2004

Tax fraud, false accounting and embezzlement over offshore trading of TV film rights

Still before courts

Paying David Mills, husband of British culture minister Tessa Jowell, for witholding evidence

Still before courts