QUESTION: WHAT does Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi have in common with the saints of the early church? Answer: They both achieve their lofty status by popular acclamation.
Or so it seemed yesterday as Mr Berlusconi wound up a seemingly highly successful party congress in Rome, marking the founding of his new centre-right People of Freedom party (PDL).
The three-day founding congress was, in theory, held to mark the fusion of Mr Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party with the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale (AN).
In practice, it sounded more like an uninterrupted hymn of praise to Mr Berlusconi, described on Friday by one enthusiastic young delegate as simply “a hero”.
In such a climate there was never much doubt about who was going to be elected, by acclamation, as the first president of the new party. Indeed, the contest for the party presidency turned out to be a one-horse race since only Berlusconi, Silvio had been nominated for the job. A show of wildly enthusiastic hands did the rest.
Earlier, there had been a vote to approve the new statute book of the PDL, by comparison almost a close-run thing with four voting against and five abstaining from the reported 5,820 delegates.
As Mr Berlusconi and just about all the senior figures in his current centre-right government stood together on stage at the end of the congress to the accompaniment of first Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and then the Italian national anthem, it might have seemed that this was merely another morale-boosting day out for the troops.
After all, the “fusion” of Forza Italia and AN was in many senses already a fait accompli, given that the two parties ran together (and won) under the PDL label in last year’s general election.
In reality, though, the fusion (some would caustically say the subsumption) of AN and Forza Italia marks another highly important step for Mr Berlusconi and his centre-right followers.
In his speech, the prime minister claimed that the latest opinion polls gave his new party a 44 per cent share of the national vote, whilst on Friday’s opening day he declared that his long-term aim for the party would be to arrive at a 51 per cent threshold. Given the current disarray on the centre-left, this does not seem an exaggerated claim.
In his closing speech yesterday, Mr Berlusconi touched on many familiar themes making especial mention of the two words – “popolo” and “libertà” – which make up the party name while issuing his ritualistic condemnation of the lack of “seriousness” of the centre-left opposition.
Promising to lead Italy out of its current economic crisis, Mr Berlusconi also argued that the country could no longer delay institutional reforms. The office of prime minister needs strengthening, he said, while parliamentary, federal and local government reforms are a matter of urgency, inviting the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) to join him in such a reform process.
Speaking from Vina del Mar in Chile, however, senior centre-left leader Francesco Rutelli rejected the offer: “I’m not going to get involved in games about reforms. We know those games well, they lead nowhere. Instead the PD should stick to its own agenda . . . ”