IF ANYONE had doubts about just how much this weekend’s mayoral election in Milan is worrying Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, his typically theatrical behaviour at Thursday’s G8 summit in the French resort of Deauville offered an indication.
As the world leaders sat down to business at the opening session, Mr Berlusconi fixed his gaze steadily on US president Barack Obama. When he judged the moment right, and having in the meantime alerted his personal photographer, the prime minister bounded across to the president, immediately engaging him in conversation.
Various camera microphones picked up the first few words of the two-minute exchange.
In essence, Mr Berlusconi felt the need to update Mr Obama on the Italian judicial system, explaining that in Italy “we almost have a dictatorship of leftist judges”, adding that he himself has thus far emerged unscathed from 31 trials. To an increasingly perplexed but silent president, Mr Berlusconi then outlined his plans to “reform” the justice system in Italy.
We have long become accustomed to Mr Berlusconi’s little international displays of showmanship, or indeed gaffes, but this one took place in a specific context.
For a start, he is due in court in Milan next Monday and Tuesday, with the second of these hearings (which he will not be attending) concerning the infamous “Rubygate” sex scandal.
Perhaps even more importantly, however, he risks an embarrassing political setback in mayoral elections this weekend in his hometown of Milan. In the run-off vote, the centre-right candidate, current mayor Letizia Moratti, is under huge pressure from the centre-left candidate, Giuliano Pisapia, who finished almost seven points ahead of her in the first round two weeks ago.
For various historical reasons, many commentators tend to see Italy’s business capital as a significant guide to the national political landscape.
Mr Berlusconi, too, has seriously upped the ante on himself not only by putting his name on the electoral ticket alongside that of Mr Moratti but also by his insistence that this vote was a de facto “pro-Berlusconi” or “pro-judiciary” referendum.
Defeat for the centre-right candidate in Mr Berlusconi’s hometown, a traditional power base not only for him but also for his vital coalition partner, the federalist Northern League, would clearly highlight a major crisis in “Berlusconismo”.
This would also be the first such setback for the centre-right in Milan in the last 20 years.
This weekend’s vote comes at the end of a tense, bad-tempered electoral campaign that prompted Neapolitan singer Gigi D’Alessio to withdraw from a pro-Moratti concert in Milan on Thursday, saying that as a southerner he had been offended by some of the Northern League’s campaign language.
Much more serious was the incident that marked the first television debate between the two candidates when Mr Moratti accused Mr Pisapia of having been part of a violent leftist group and of having been involved in the theft of a car (Ms Moratti later apologised for the accusation).
In such a context, and faced with other delicate run-off votes in Cagliari, Naples and Trieste, Mr Berlusconi needs all the help he can get.
So what better idea than a nice little photo opportunity with the famously photogenic US president? What is more, as centre-left critics rush in to criticise his “humiliating” and “obsessive” behaviour, he has successfully switched the attention away from Milan. Or has he?