THE WHOLE world knows by now that there is nothing Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi loves better than a good party.
Whether his guests be senior members of the foreign press corps or wannabe starlets hoping for a fast track route to showbiz fame and glory, he likes to keep them entertained, albeit in dramatically different ways.
Given that Mr Berlusconi is not only a hugely controversial prime minister but also one whose international image has on occasion been, shall we say, tarnished, it came as a huge surprise earlier this week to hear that he had agreed to wine and dine a small number of the foreign press.
In the past, Mr Berlusconi has been dismissive of the foreign press, referring to the Foreign Press Association in the Eternal City as a “den of communists”.
Was he about to make peace, offering an olive branch that came in the shape of his infamous tricolour pasta? Or would he prove only too willing to once more lecture the foreign hacks, pointing out that they had understood little or nothing about contemporary Italy?
Mr Berlusconi picked his audience well. Many of the world’s most prestigious media organisations were represented, especially those based in nations with a bent for bombing the hell out of a country and reducing it to rubble in an attempt to convince the natives that “democracy” really is good for you.
The prime minister did not disappoint. Within hours, the world’s media were reporting the sensational news that (1) Mr Berlusconi would “stand down in 2013”; (2) that in his place he was nominating two of his closest aides, justice minister Angelino Alfano and cabinet under-secretary Gianni Letta as the next prime minister and president respectively.
Nor did the meeting pass unnoticed. The Asca agency spoke of “a four-hour-long meal … where there were no jokes, just a willingness on the part of the prime minister to confront current political realities”.
Even though the meeting was theoretically “off the record”, within hours Italian media were full of the “sensational news”. (How a meeting between more than 20 journalists and a prime minister could ever be expected to remain “off the record” beggars belief.)
But there was method to Mr Berlusconi’s new-found loquacity with the foreign media. Within hours, his senior spokesman, Paolo Bonaiuti, had issued a statement which claimed that the prime minister’s comments were merely a “hypothesis” and that the foreign media’s interpretation of them had been “deformed” and “imagined”.
So, Mr B is not resigning after all. In the meantime, however, he managed, at least for a night, to deflect the attention of the foreign hacks from those other dinner parties, the ones in Arcore, of which he is allegedly so fond.
Perhaps that was the real reason for his cosy little get-together with the foreign media, no?