Berlusconi’s funeral, Meloni’s embrace of his children. The premier picks up the baton – Corriere.it

The political history of the last thirty years is collected in the Duomo of Milan. The face of each leader as the banner of as many battles, lived on both sides of the barricade. As war veterans they bid farewell to Silvio Berlusconi and a piece of their life. Together they turn over the page they helped write, waiting to figure out how the next one will be filled. Therefore attention focused on Meloni, who symbolically holds out his hand to take up the baton. The signs are unmistakable. The premier – after the letter to the Courier – publishes a commemorative video of the Knight on the network in which he promises that he will not forget him and that he will be proud. And waiting to launch the package of reforms on justice in his memory, in the churchyard of the Cathedral, he embraces and kisses the children of the founder of the centre-right.

The liturgy respected to the end, she just needs to get on a running board, whispers Renzi. But to take on Berlusconi’s political legacy, even one step will not be small or even easy, since the Knighted the metric system of the Second Republic and now – explains the Ligurian governor Toti – we will have to invent another unit of measurement to move forward. It will be necessary to understand how Fratelli d’Italia will react and how Forza Italia will react which – given those present at the religious function – is a much vaster and more composite world than the percentage it holds. Personal resistance will add up to political and cultural differences, therefore the outcome of the operation cannot be taken for granted. Stand a variant will be created and the agreement with Meloni will be mediated by an allied list anchored to the Ppe. One thing is certain: now that Arcore’s number no longer rings, the urgency can be seen in everyone. As if it were an emergency.

But for two hours the worry remained outside the door of the Cathedral. In church everyone gathers thinking about his past with Berlusconi. Who knows if the premier will have remembered when – as a young minister – she joined the battle of the Knight against the architectural monsters designed by the left-wing starchitects. They put me on the cross with a series of appeals for the villas I had set up in L’Aquila after the earthquake. But Giorgia points out to me that they are the same ones who designed neighborhoods like Zen in Palermo. And in the middle of the Council of Ministers Giorgia was heard exclaiming: Well done president, throw these fake powerful people in the middle of the tents. Or maybe Meloni – as head of the government – will have thought about the last quarrel with Berlusconi because of the war: Silvio but you can’t tell me certain things. I seem to hear Russian propaganda. The phone call went badly. Then came the redial.

Berlusconi’s story crosses the stories of those present. Casini, who was both an ally and adversary of the Cavaliere, must have recalled the words that reached him from the top of the centre-right when his party wanted and obtained a sudden government crisis. All right, I should send you to hell. But since I’m an educated person – Berlusconi smiled through clenched teeth – I’ll send you and your friend Pier some postcards from Bermuda. The fact is that, at times, the Knight’s augmented reality turned into truths that did not coincide with reality. Draghi’s appointment to the ECB, for example, was part of the catalogue. It is not known whether the former governor crossed his mind during the ceremony. Berlusconi has always said that he was the one who pointed it out to his European partners and Supermario has never disavowed the version. Although the proposal had come from Sarkozy.

The farewell ceremony is consumed between memories and sighs.
And when Mattarella enters the Cathedral, everyone understands that the story is definitively accomplished. The head of state pays homage to thirty years of political confrontations and legitimate conflicts, which intersect in the steps of the bicameral reforms in D’Alema’s time and end with the election to the Quirinale. But his role was fundamental in the political affair of the Knight.

If Berlusconi became Berlusconi he owes it to Mattarella, to his electoral law: the Mattarellum which put an end to the proportional season. In fact, it was the Mattarellum that allowed the Knight to arrive at Palazzo Chigi and to become the standard bearer of the bipolar system, the interpreter of a season that is no longer over, despite the change of model for voting. And it will be a coincidence but in the churchyard, to give a final farewell to Berlusconi, Mattarella and Meloni are side by side: on the one hand who with his electoral law opens his political phase; on the other who would like to inherit it.

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