intervista del New York Times al "salvatore dell'italia"

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

> Berlusconi, in a Rough Week, Says Only He Can Save Italy
> By FRANK BRUNI
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/international/europe/10ITAL.html
>
>
> OME, May 9 - Even for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, it was an
unusually
> tumultuous week.
>
> He became the first sitting Italian prime minister to testify as a
criminal
> defendant, prompting speculation that he could also become the first to be
> convicted of a crime while in office.
>
> He faced fresh accusations that he was trying to use his direct or
indirect
> control over six of the seven national television networks to influence
news
> coverage.
>
> But in a rare interview here late Thursday night, he portrayed himself as
> nothing less than the savior of Italian democracy, willing to attract
undue
> legal persecution and unwarranted vilification to protect Italy from the
> clutches of the left.
>
> "It's a great sacrifice to do what I'm doing," Mr. Berlusconi, who is also
> Italy's richest man, said over a nearly two-hour dinner that went past
> midnight in Palazzo Chigi, the prime minister's official residence. "I'm
not
> having fun at all."
>
> "I have a sailboat, but in two years, I've only been on it one day," he
> said, speaking in Italian and striking a stoic tone. "And I haven't been
to
> my house in Bermuda for two or three years. And the same goes for my house
> in Portofino. I've been there for only one day in the last nine months."
>
> "Do you understand?" he asked. "My life has changed. The quality has
become
> terrible. What a brutal job." He added that he worked constantly and was
> "always alone, always alone here."
>
> Asked why he endures it, he said that he entered politics in 1993 and
> remains in politics today to keep Communists and other leftists from
> undermining Italian democracy.
>
> "Otherwise," he said, "there would be no freedom in Italy."
>
> "If I left political life right now, Italy would fall into the hands of
> Communists," he added later, resurrecting a specter that long defined
> Italian politics, although not in the last few years.
>
> He said he alone had the ability to prevent that.
>
> "There is no one else in Italy today," he said, as two aides, flanking him
> at the dinner table, chimed in simultaneously: "Who else? Who else?"
>
> "It's a question I ask myself," the 66-year-old prime minister said. "How
> much longer do I have to keep living this life of sacrifices?"
>
> Mr. Berlusconi's first long interview with an American journalist in many
> months came as he approached the two-year anniversary of his second stint
as
> prime minister.
>
> He also held the office in 1994, but his coalition collapsed after seven
> months as he was dogged by a previous set of corruption charges.
>
> He is now on trial in Milan, accused of bribing judges in 1985 to prevent
> the sale of a state-controlled food company to another businessman. A
> verdict could come in the summer or fall, during Italy's six-month turn in
> the rotating presidency of the European Union. He has denied any
wrongdoing.
>
> Now Mr. Berlusconi, a onetime cruise ship crooner, is mounting his defense
> in the court of public opinion. He is doing so in typically flamboyant
> style, proving anew that Italian politics remains a peculiarly operatic
> spectacle and that there is no figure on the international stage quite
like
> him.
>
> During his testimony in Milan on Monday, he did not so much address the
> specific charges against him as point his finger at other Italian
> politicians - including Romano Prodi, the European Commission president -
> who were involved in the business deal in question.
>
> "If anyone should be afraid of the trial, that person is not me," Mr.
> Berlusconi said during the interview.
>
> But he said he was not delivering a coded warning.
>
> Mr. Berlusconi brimmed with energy, nervous or otherwise. He jittered
> visibly in his seat, ate only small portions of his prosciutto and pasta
and
> drank only a few sips of white wine from a glass that the palazzo waiters
> seemed to know not to fill to the brim.
>
> His manner mingled fire with frivolity. Right before dinner, at the start
of
> the interview, he recalled a piece of paper that he kept as a university
> student. It had his girlfriend's name at the top and, below that, the
names
> of five other young women. He said that when his mother asked him who they
> were, he explained, "The waiting list."
>
> But there was no doubt that the interview was part of a serious public
> relations campaign.
>