Noemi with Berlusconi's photo

To an extent, the events of the near future depend on Italy's fast approaching European and local elections (next weekend); should Berlusconi's government suffer a significant loss in votes, who knows what he would do. On the other hand, again this being Italy, the whole business could also fade into nothingness if something else happens to divert the press' attention, or if it should be revealed - once again - that a majority of Italians think that Berlusconi's lifestyle and behaviour (which many others, including this writer, find abhorrent) is just fine and dandy. Something in which they wish they, too, could partake.

But other things are. Berlusconi, Italy's richest man and informally estranged from his wife Veronica for several years, has a penchant for surrounding himself with sexy young women, in fact with beautiful people in general, and holding luxurious parties in the reportedly fabulous Villa Certosa, his vacation home in Sardinia to which, among others, he likes to fly in planeloads of young female beauties. Just this weekend, he filed on privacy grounds - and won -for a judicial order to prevent a photographer who secretly shot hundreds of photos of last year's Christmas party in Sardinia, the one Noemi Letizia attended, which among others showed the former premier of the Czech Republic naked in Berlusconi's reportedly magnificent garden.

Some observers feel Berlusconi's attitude towards women is demeaning, since for the most part he puts their physical looks before anything else. Others, that his life-style and values simply do not provide an acceptable example for a head of government.

Still others, for example the highly-respected Corriere della Sera columnist, Sergio Romano, believe Berlusconi is risking jeopardizing his ability to govern effectively by allowing himself the kind of ambiguous behaviour that can lead to misinterpretations and which a good number of Italians find embarrassing. Private life becomes public, Romano wrote on May 27th, when people get the impression that the over self-confidence created by political success may have altered the concept that a political leader has of himself and of his functions.

Romano pointed out that before the case exploded, Berlusconi was doing fairly well. He had succeeded in getting the Naples garbage situation under control, he appears to have gotten Alitalia past the threat of bankruptcy and he has shown considerable leadership in dealing with the aftermath of the L'Aquila earthquake.

But in the final analysis, his success as a political leader will depend on his ability to help Italy get through the current economic crisis, to deal with thorny problems ranging from pensions to the job market and the long overdo institutional reforms of which the country is sorely in need. And he may have a hard time doing this is he has to spend too much time rebutting this and other more serious charges involving alleged bribery.

That being said, accusations of one type or another seem to roll off Berlusconi like water off a duck's back and today he appeared at a press conference in Bari, in the southern region of Apulia (Puglia), exuding nothing but political self-confidence and aplomb. All he had to say was that the photos that showed scenes from inside his residence were an invasion of privacy and that with the attempt to publish them his enemies had truly touched bottom.