Under the leadership of re-elected president Giorgio Napolitano, a "grand coalition" of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and the centre-right coalition of parties - headed by Silvio Berlusconi - has been sworn in as the new government in Italy.
The new prime minister, Enrico Letta, represents the conservative and Catholic faction of the PD. He is also the nephew of one of the closest Berlusconi allies, Gianni Letta.
The new government will include many important politicians in Berlusconi's coalition, and Berlusconi, although not sitting in cabinet, will have enormous power and influence.
When considering the trials and the scandals which have plagued Berlusconi in recent years - as well as his enormous responsibilities in pushing the country to the edge of a terrible social, economic, cultural and moral crisis - one might wonder how he managed to retain power once again.
Although in the recent election he lost millions of votes, there is still approximately a quarter of Italian voters who support him. These are people who are emotionally attached to their leader; people who are still under the strong influence of the TV channels and other media controlled by him; people who despise the political left for ideological reasons; and people who are afraid to lose the (little or large) benefits they gain from a system of widespread corruption and tax evasion.
In a country where power has remained for a long time in the hands of elderly, white, heterosexual, Catholic and conservative men, Berlusconi still represents a relatively accurate reflection of the country's socio-economic, cultural and generational hegemony. Italy has for instance often been described as a "gerontocracy" (a system of power dominated by elderly people), and it is not by chance that all the three main candidates as Presidents of the Republic (Stefano Rodotà, Franco Marini and Romano Prodi) were born between 1933 and 1939. While none of them were successful, it is no coincidence that it was an even older man, Giorgio Napolitano (born in 1925), who was.
These social, cultural and anthropological characteristics have guaranteed Berlusconi a significant number of votes even in the recent election. Still, his coalition did not win outright, and one could have expected that the two other major political groups, the centre-left coalition and the new populist movement, Five-Star Movement (M5S), would have taken the opportunity to isolate Berlusconi once and for all. How can we then explain their failure to do so?
The centre-left coalition that should have easily won the majority in both chambers made three fundamental mistakes before the election. It supported the technocratic government led by Mario Monti, which imposed extreme and unfair cuts in the name of the economic austerity imposed by Europe and by the financial markets.
Almost certain of an easy victory against Berlusconi, his political rivals underestimated his resilience. They also underestimated the emerging influence of the M5S, a protest movement led by a former comedian (Beppe Grillo), which managed to attract 25.5% of the total vote for the lower house and 23.8% in the Senate. Having run a very poor election campaign, the centre-left coalition led by Pier Luigi Bersani obtained the majority of seats in the lower house, but failed to do so in the Senate. This coalition itself is profoundly divided, between a more leftist and innovative side, and a more powerful, conservative side. Had they won the election, they could have maintained internal discipline. Not so in the current political chaos.
