A comedy that has gone on too long

摘要

Another week, another forecast that Silvio Berlusconi may go. Italy's 74-year-old prime minister, first elected 16 years ago, is a famously canny fighter. A new sex scandal, more mutinous murmurs by his former allies, the threat of an early election, claims that he abused his position by telephoning the police before they released a teenage girl suspected of theft: none of these may prove enough to lever the obstinate old goat out. But there is now an unmistakable feeling in the Italian air of an era drawing to a close.