Berlusconi\'s \'strange comedy\' leaves him out on a limb

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From Monsters and Critics.com

By Carola Frentzen
Apr 15, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Rome - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was out on a limb Saturday in his ongoing fight to cling to power. The incumbent has been giving non-stop interviews to the Italian media, calling press conferences and even writing letters to the country\'s biggest selling newspaper, the Corriere della Sera.

But even Berlusconi\'s coalition partners seem weary and unwilling to support his lust for power any longer. Not a single one of his former ministers has made any comment on the wrangling: even Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, who otherwise follows Berlusconi like a shadow and is considered his closest advisor, seemed to have been swallowed up by the ground.

Justice Minister Roberto Castelli has now gone so far as to criticize publicly the prime minister\'s behaviour. Berlusconi had proposed a short-term coalition with the centre-left alliance in his letter to the Corriere della Sera, following the motto, \'Better to have some power than none at all.\'

Castelli is annoyed that Berlusconi did not discuss the proposal with any of his coalition allies. With unilateral actions like these, the prime minister is dismantling the centre-right House of Freedoms coalition.

Meanwhile, the victorious centre-right coalition is taking the absurd situation very calmly: Romano Prodi merely said that Berlusconi should accept the left\'s win in the elections and cease this \'strange comedy.\'

\'It is time for our opponents without further uncertainties to acknowledge the victory of the coalition which has the honour of governing the country,\' Prodi said.

Although more recently Prodi has shown signs of being irritated at having a proper victory party ruined by Berlusconi\'s talk of \'electoral fraud.\'

In numerical terms, a victory for the right is no longer even possible: Prodi did indeed only take control of parliament by a margin of 25,000 votes, but a recount of 2,100 ballot papers currently underway could not change that result.

Where Berlusconi gets his proverbial self-confidence and perennial optimism from is a mystery to his coalition partners. \'I would be prepared to be prime minister once again, and I am waiting anxiously - like half of Italy - for the results to finally come out,\' was the last thing the multi-millionaire said, adding that his coalition was the \'moral victor\' in the elections.

A \'strange comedy\' indeed.

© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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