Forza Italia, in Berlusconi’s tiring but powerful speech the future legacy of “lay saints” – Corriere.it

There curiosity has become almost morbid when at 13, perfectly punctual as scheduled, the leader makes his semi-divine appearance to the blue people in a video (recorded on Friday). To the world that, in truth, had already considered it part of the past, overwhelmed by a very hard disease that often leaves no way out for younger and stronger physiques.

He doesn’t deny it, what was almost an embrace with death: Here I am, I’m here for you. For the first time in a month, with a shirt and jacket, he makes his debut by touching what over the years has almost become a midnight blue uniform, with Forza Italia pin to break the dark. A dress that often wrapped him up too much, which now it almost seems to stay away from himthat hosts a suffering body whose always smiling face – even when the effort makes it look like a grimace – does not hide pain.

Berlusconi heavily rigged, but this time out of respect for others more than out of vanity, he speaks in a tired and heartfelt voice, at times weak. Twice – in long twenty minutes – stops to drink water from a glass to his right, placed next to three highlighters and two pens, while two of his books, Speeches for democracy and L’Italia che ho in mente stand out on the left. Once he snorts. Every now and then he stumbles over a word, almost chewing it.

But his a powerful speech, very human, perch speaks perhaps for the first time to those who will be there after him. Let me be clear, he has every intention of staying, for a long time. When he talks about the hardest moment — the night he wakes up at San Raffaele and asks what am I doing here, why am I here, what am I fighting for here? and my Marta who watched over me replies “you are here because you have worked so hard, perhaps too much, you are working hard to save our democracy and our freedom” — Silvio Berlusconi already draws what he would like to pass on to posterity. A man who defied everything and everyone, communism his first enemy, to save Italy, the country I love.

He talks more about his past than about the future, he mentions friends of the first hour, those who did the feat with him – Baget Bozzo, Martino, Giuliano Ferrara, Urbani, the ideologues of the party – no one instead of those next to them today is called by name. But Berlusconi leaves them a future legacy: the role of witnesses of the secular religion that Forza Italia represents, that of even secular saints.

It would seem blasphemous to anyone else, it becomes normal if to say so Berlusconi, the leader who survived for 30 years to vicissitudes suffered as provoked by himself, political, personal, health. The head of a party according to which the impossible becomes possible, and somehow what happens in a tribute day dedicated to him.

A kind of secular miracle occurs, to stay on topic. A movement that has always found a raison d’être in him returns visually united on stage even if the subterranean divisions exist and will emerge sooner or later. Together next to each other, on the notes of the Forza Italia anthem, they seem to be one Tajaniwho sees the blue future in this government and in the strong bond with Meloni, and Licia Ronzulli, who makes it clear that she will not give up: In politics you are a marathon runner, once you lead, once you are in a group… But you must not give up your own identity.

And then Alessandro Cattaneo challenging a tab by asking a scalable, contestable, merit-based party e Renato Schifani who expects an open FI where not all roles are concentrated and the tasks are also distributed according to the electoral weights, thinking of his Sicily as a fort of votes but not of responsibility. They will have to keep alive a party that is not just a temple in honor of the leader. AND Berlusconi invites them to be accountable to the government, loyalty and continuity with our values. Never so fragilely human as yesterday.

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