Politics imitates comic art as Berlusconi returns to the fray

He is a sex-obsessed buffoon with a comb-over and a giant ego. After being rumbled for having links to the mafia, he and his cronies, including a woman young enough to be his daughter, are led off in handcuffs by the Carabinieri.

But he remains defiant. "I will return!" he tells his sycophantic supporters.

Cetto La Qualunque, a fictional politician from Calabria, is a character played by one of the country's favourite comic actors in a new film, Tutto Tutto, Niente Niente (meaning Everything, Nothing). The actor, Antonio Albanese, said it was intended as a far-fetched parody of Italian politics, but after a week of drama in Rome that verged on the farcical, the knockabout comedy is starting to look alarmingly like real life.

The film reaches cinemas on Thursday after Silvio Berlusconi, who is mired in an under age prostitution trial and was recently given a four-year jail sentence for tax fraud (he is at liberty pending an appeal), triumphantly announced that he was bounding back on to the political scene.

Il Cavaliere, or The Knight, once again convulsed Italy and confounded the world by declaring that he would fight to become prime minister for a fourth time, prompting his successor, Mario Monti, to resign.

The Mummy Returns was the headline in Liberation, a French newspaper, while Italian cartoons portrayed Berlusconi as an inscrutable Sphinx. The shock and confusion caused by his declaration only deepened as the 76-year-old tycoon vacillated wildly, one moment confirming his bid for power and the next saying he would support Monti, despite spending the past few months doing his best to undermine the unelected technocrat prime minister.

During a rambling speech at a book launch on Wednesday, Berlusconi also said that the best candidate for prime minister would be Angelino Alfano, the secretary of his People of Freedom party, before changing his mind and saying he wanted to see Monti at the head of a centre-Right bloc of parties.

"If Monti doesn't run, if we cannot bring together all the parties of the centre-Right, then the Left will win," he said. "Monti is a person that could unite all the moderates."

Italians were divided as to whether his flip-flopping was part of some fiendishly clever political strategy, or evidence that the ex-premier was losing his grip on reality.

Either way, Berlusconi's dramatic return to the forefront of Italian politics rattled international markets, prompted fearful warnings of disaster from Brussels to Berlin, and threw austerity-weary Italians into fresh confusion. "The next couple of months are going to be great fun if you are a political scientist or a journalist," said Professor James Walston, an expert on Italian politics at the American University of Rome. "But politics in Italy right now is a bit like cancer - very interesting if you are an oncologist, but rather less fun if you are the patient."

With two months to go before the general election, the politica arena is in chaos. Berlusconi cannot seem to make up his mind whether he will contest the election or not. Another great unknown is whether Monti, who will formally step down this month once the 2013 budget is passed, will offer himself as a candidate.

Calls for Monti to throw himself into the fray have come from business leaders and centrist parties in Italy, and outside the country from leaders including France's Francois Hollande and Germany's Angela Merkel. All have warned darkly of the consequences of re-electing Berlusconi because he is expected to roll back the austerity reforms that Monti has implemented over the past 13 months.

The only sure thing is the identity of the centre-Left's candidate for prime minister, Pier Luigi Bersani, an ex-communist with a bald pate and a penchant for chewing on stubby cigars. He has promised to continue the Monti agenda and to enact fresh reforms, although he has been sketchy on details and would surely face pressure from his own supporters to stray from austerity once in office.

Bersani's Democratic Party has more than 30 per cent of the vote, against the 15 per cent of Berlusconi's People of Freedom party. But commentators and the public have learnt never to write off Berlusconi's chances.

He has an uncanny ability to tap into the mindset of the man and woman in the street, is a seasoned and brilliant election campaigner and can throw the full weight of his media empire behind his bid.

His attacks on the euro, austerity and what he calls the "German-centric policies" of Monti could tap into populist sentiment. "He's a very good performer, he has lots of favours he can call in and he has huge resources, so I think he could do quite well," said Prof Walston. Most analysts see the centre-Left winning the lower house of parliament, but give Berlusconi a fighting chance of blocking the Democratic Party's hold on the Senate, the upper house. That would enable him to act as a thorn in the side of the new government, blocking legislation.

All those calculations could be forgotten if Monti decides to run. He said this was not an option "for now", but the pressure for him to declare his hand is building.

Other options would be for the former European competition commissioner, who has no political party of his own, to be appointed president when 87-year-old Giorgio Napolitano steps down in May, or to act as finance minister under a centre-Left government.

While the political drama unfolds, Berlusconi's tangled personal life bubbles beneath the surface as ever.

The alleged under-age prostitute known as Ruby the Heart Stealer, whom he is accused of paying for sex at his bunga bunga parties, turned up in Mexico after failing to appear at the trial in Milan on Monday. Berlusconi also learnt that he may be called to give evidence in a second investigation, also involving allegations that he slept with prostitutes, this time at his palazzo in Rome.

The case revolves around a businessman from the Adriatic port of Bari, Giampaolo Tarantini, who is accused of recruiting call girls for the then prime minister's parties. Prosecutors are investigating claims that Berlusconi paid the middleman euros 500,000 to cover up the fact that the women were high-class call girls.

One, Patrizia D'Addario, who says she slept with Berlusconi in a bed that was a gift from Vladimir Putin, appeared in court last week.

Other showgirls involved include Sabina Began, who is nicknamed "The Queen Bee" of Berlusconi's female fans, Barbara Montereale, a glamour model, and Lucia Rossini, who snapped photos of herself in the prime minister's bathroom. Meanwhile, the media baron has a new girlfriend, Francesca Pascale, who at 27 is nearly 50 years his junior and served as a provincial councillor for his party in Naples. The makers of the new film can hardly believe their luck.

"When we started writing the film we obviously didn't know what was going to happen - it was even before the Ruby affair," Albanese, told the Italian press. "We weren't following the news, but it seems the news has been following us. The film is grotesque, dramatic, comic - exactly like our country."