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July 14, 2012

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Berlusconi plots comeback as he dreams the impossible

WHEN Silvio Berlusconi resigned after dominating Italy's political scene for two decades, he left a country in financial shambles and a personal legacy tarnished by sex and corruption scandals.

Commentators called it the end of an era.

Eight months later the political world is abuzz with signs that the 75-year-old media mogul is plotting a return to power that even his closest allies had considered impossible.

Even as one-time friend, now bitter foe Gianfranco Fini appeared incredulous in a television interview on Thursday night - saying "Italians no longer believe in miracles" - Berlusconi's allies were talking him up. "He's our strongest candidate," said Angelino Alfano, a former justice minister previously considered as Berlusconi's heir apparent.

Berlusconi himself has yet to commit. But his friends are now openly calling him a candidate and spreading reports that business leaders are pushing him to enter the race for elections next spring. He reportedly has designed a new symbol with a patriotic touch for his party - a kite in the Italian tricolor.

What's changed from the November night when he left the presidential palace by a back door following his resignation to avoid jeering demonstrators in the square outside?

An increasingly unpopular austerity program aimed largely at reversing the excesses of the Berlusconi era.

Berlusconi, a three-time former premier, has always claimed to be attuned to the popular mood, abolishing the property tax on first homes in a move seen as decisive to his victory in 2008 elections. His successor at the head of a technocrat government, economics professor Mario Monti, has given Italy an air of respectability in European and international circles, but his economic recovery package is causing more pain than growth.




 

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