It was September 22 in Rome's Piazza del Popolo, packed to the brim with militants from the Italian right who were cherishing their return to power after years of technical or progressive rulers. The last time the right had been expelled from the Italian Executive was in 2011, when Silvio Berlusconi, ridiculed for his sex scandals, and persecuted by the financial crisis that threatened Europe, was rudely removed.
A lot had happened between then and September 22. The Roman square no longer acclaimed the inventor of the coalition, the one who had begun to agree with the old Northern League of Umberto Bossi and shook hands with the heirs of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), today converted into the artifact softened by Giorgia Meloni. Berlusconi has long ceased to have that power. As much as it was hard for him to accept it, today the favorites are his pupils, beginning with the Italian prime minister. He never stopped seeing her as that twenty-something he appointed Minister of Youth.
The unitary rally closing the campaign in Rome served to consecrate Meloni as the new leader of the Italian right, but also to warn that Berlusconi was weaker than he wanted to believe. As if he had remained stuck in the nineties, he returned to shake the shadow of the ghosts of communism. He had to speak while holding onto the lectern, so as not to fall, and then leave the podium clinging to the arm of his number two, the now Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, smiling tightly.
The last years of Silvio Berlusconi, between comings and goings from the hospital, have not been easy. Contracting the coronavirus – he ended up with pneumonia at the San Raffaele in Milan – made him feel terrible, so much so that he began a witch hunt to find the culprit of having infected him among his family circle in Sardinia. He achieved some personal victories, beginning with the acquittal of having bribed witnesses to his sexual bacchanalia – the so-called Ruby Ter process – or his notorious return to the Senate after nine years of being expelled from the Upper House for tax fraud, but politically each once again he was seen as an awkward element by his partners. During the negotiations to form a government, he even staged his discomfort with Meloni, allowing himself to be photographed in the Senate with some notes in very clear calligraphy where the behavior of the premier with a list of grievances: "obstinate", "arrogant", "arrogant" and "offensive". No one thought it was an oversight.
He even put the European People's Party (EPP) in a delicate situation with his comments justifying his old friend Vladimir Putin for the Ukrainian invasion and blaming Volodimir Zelensky for the war. During a meeting to elect the spokesman for Forza Italia in the Chamber of Deputies, he boasted of having resumed relations with the Russian president, who gave him twenty bottles of vodka and a "very sweet" letter for his 86th birthday, on the 29th of September, after two decades of friendship. Manfred Weber's PPE, evidently embarrassed, had no choice but to cancel an event in Naples.
In this scenario, a name has gained a lot of influence, especially in recent months. It is that of Marta Fascina, the young 33-year-old deputy from Forza Italia, with whom she had a sentimental relationship since 2020. Fascina did not marry Berlusconi – at least, as far as is known – but she did star in an outlandish wedding fictitious, dressed in white and cutting the wedding cake, last year. He, however, already called her her “wife”.
Fascina is not a minor character to understand this last stage. She has achieved an influence within her circle that none of her past couples had. Rumors say that Fascina would be one of the people in Berlusconi's pro-Russian orbit and an element that would explain his latest controversial statements. She apparently is convinced of an imminent nuclear war scenario. For this reason, according to La Stampa, Berlusconi and she were looking for a house with a bunker to use as a nuclear shelter and drawing up a list of people close to them to save on a plane to escape the shock wave that a supposed attack would generate in London.
His steps at the political level were relevant. Fascina managed to stop the all-powerful senator Licia Ronzulli and place a friend of hers in her position as coordinator of the training in Lombardy. Although Ronzulli is still the head of the party in the Upper House, her influence is far from what she was. She had been the culprit that Berlusconi's ministers in the Draghi government ended up abandoning Forza Italia, and also the shadow behind some disagreements in the Executive shared with the Brothers of Italy and the League. Therefore, Fascina, more collaborative, was well regarded by Meloni. She also has the approval of Marina Berlusconi, the magnate's eldest daughter and right eye, in charge of taking care of his business.
In the party, apparently, the one who has the reins is still Tajani, Berlusconi's number two, deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Although the death of the owner of Mediaset, who left without ever designating a political heir, will undoubtedly open an internal war. Several will pack their bags and knock on the doors of the Brothers of Italy or the centrist movement of Carlo Calenda, as former minister Mara Carfagna already did. Others will try to keep the ship afloat. But no one is sure that he will survive without his captain.
