Will he or won't he? Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is playing guessing games ahead of next year's elections, leaving Italians utterly confused as to whether he really intends to bid for high office for a sixth time. Months of ambiguity seemed to be over last week, when primaries to select a new leader for his centre-right People of Freedom party (PDL) were scrapped and it was announced that the 76-year-old media mogul "wanted to come back as a protagonist."
The picture changed again on this week, when Berlusconi said his decision to regain control of Italy's conservatives did not necessarily mean he would be a prime ministerial candidate. "Will your run again?" he was asked at a book launch in Rome on Wednesday. "Do you want the answer from yesterday, from this morning, from lunchtime or from now?" Berlusconi shot back, in a self-mocking quip.
Eventually, he said he could endorse his successor, Mario Monti, at the helm of an awkward coalition comprising the PDL and its former allies, the euro-sceptic and anti-Monti Northern League, as well as the pro-Europe, pro-Monti Union of Centrist Christian Democrats (UDC). "I doubt he intends to do this, but we are sure that all conservatives would be ready to support Monti as the leader of such a coalition," Berlusconi said. Bafflingly, the offer came after days of vicious attacks by Berlusconi and the PDL on the non-partisan economist, who is blamed for aggravating a recession by applying German-prescribed rounds of austerity.
The head of the centrist UDC, Pier Ferdinando Casini, said Berlusconi's latest comments suggested he was "in a clear confusional state." Il Foglio, a conservative paper that is urging the former premier to step back from front-line politics, ran a story on Thursday arguing that "there is method in the chaos organised by (Berlusconi), but only he knows what it is."
Monti, meanwhile, is said to be considering backing a rival centrist coalition and is not interested in Berlusconi's offer, the centre-left La Repubblica newspaper reported on Thursday. Northern League leader Roberto Maroni, for his part, has dismissed Berlusconi's suggestions as "a joke" in a Twitter message. According to latest polls, the PDL is in any case unlikely to win the elections, which are now expected to take place some time in February.
In the week in which Berlusconi stepped back into the fray, support for the PDL surged from 13.9 to 15.5 per cent, according to the Ipsos research institute. But the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) is still more than 20 percentage points ahead, on 36.4 per cent. But an alliance with the League would certainly boost the PDL's chances in Italy's wealthy northern regions and might prevent the PD from securing a majority in the upper house of parliament.
As part of the deal with the League, the PDL would endorse Maroni in upcoming regional elections in Lombardy. But if the alliance failed to materialise, Berlusconi would bring down League-led administrations in other northern regions backed by the PDL. Implicitly acknowledging that he had few takers for his plans, the scandal-plagued Berlusconi also said Wednesday that "at the moment" he remained the conservative prime ministerial candidate.
But minutes later he added that PDL secretary Angelino Alfano - the putative heir who has been forced to give up on his ambition to take over from Berlusconi - was still "absolutely in pole position" to become premier. Massimo Franco, an editorialist from Corriere della Sera, Italy's most respected newspaper, said Berlusconi was constantly switching positions because he is "searching for a good reason" to withdraw from a prime ministerial race that he knows he would lose.
The maverick politician appears significantly weakened: not only are his poll numbers bad, a split is also looming within the PDL, with hard-right and centrist factions both planning to leave. Adding to his woes, his recent anti-German attacks have left him isolated in Europe. According to Italian media, conservative leaders were ready to give Berlusconi the cold shoulder when he showed up at a meeting Thursday of the European People's Party in Brussels.