Anything to do with Silvio Berlusconi is a dance of the seven veils in which the truth is revealed - if ever - in teasing stages. Last weekend, it emerged he was going to the United States. He said it was to see his daughter and do some Christmas shopping. Now we know he went for heart surgery. His party, Forza Italia, said an operation carried out at a hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, was needed to correct the irregular heartbeat of Italy's richest individual and opposition leader. It said the operation had been "fully successful".
But there is no reason why any more credence should be given to that statement than to others made in the past on Mr Berlusconi's behalf. His initially mysterious absence in the winter of 2003-04, when he was still prime minister, turned out to have been contrived so that he could undergo facial surgery. The bandana he famously wore to welcome Tony and Cherie Blair to his Sardinian villa the following summer turned out to hide the traces of a major hair transplant. And, after he fainted at a rally last month, it was all put down to heat and fatigue.
Yes, he was taken to the intensive care unit. But that was just because the doctor looking after him was the head of that department.
Yes, he was kept in hospital for three full days. But that was just for tests - and they all showed the leader was in terrific form.
This may sound familiar - rather like what we used to hear from the Kremlin before the collapse of the Soviet Union, or what we have been hearing recently from Cuba since Fidel Castro became indisposed. There is a reason.
More perhaps than any politician in Europe today, Silvio Berlusconi is an old-style charismatic leader, and in the way of charismatic leaders there are no obvious succession arrangements for him. This is partly a result of choice and partly a result of circumstance.
At the age of 70, he knows full well that the day he names a successor will be the day he gives up his political influence. And he is not ready to do that yet.
Having passed the age at which he can be sent to jail under Italian law, he no longer faces a threat of imprisonment from the trials for alleged financial offences in which he is a defendant. But the centre-left government of Romano Prodi, who ousted him at a general election in April, has already said it intends to move one of Mr Berlusconi's three TV channels to satellite, and he must fear this is the prelude to the dismantling of his media empire.
That danger would evaporate were the tycoon-turned-politician able to claw his way back into office. And there are two ways it could happen.
The first is through a recount of this year's election in which the right lost by a whisker. Ballots from both the senate and the chamber of deputies are currently being examined following an agreement between the government and opposition.
The second, and more normal, way in which Mr Berlusconi could return to power would be in the event of an irreparable collapse of the present government. This is scarcely unthinkable.
Mr Prodi has a majority of only one elected member in the Senate, the upper house of parliament. And his coalition is made up of no less than nine very different parties.
So far, they have been held together by a passionate reluctance to let Mr Berlusconi back into office. But that could change.
Timing in all of this is crucial. If Mr Prodi's government were to fall some time next year, for example, it might just be replaced by one headed by Mr Berlusconi.
But if it can survive until the next general election, due in 2011, the right will have to find another candidate. An Italian legislature spans five years. By 2016, Italy's billionaire politician would be 79. Even by the standards of a country that reveres elderly statesmen, that is just too old.
As he lies on his back in an American hospital, Mr Berlusconi must be uneasily aware that he is a man racing the clock.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/120868.html
