The human experience of Silvio Berlusconi, protagonist of the entrepreneurial, political, institutional and sporting life of the last thirty years, ended yesterday.

Works, institutional roles and public and private lifestyles will be the subject of study for historians and, over time, will be placed in the right frame, among many lights and even some shadows, as will his story as a man, entrepreneur and politician, free from from opinions, emotions and partisanship typical of the moment in which things happen.

I met Silvio Berlusconi way back in 1996, introduced to me by Giuliano Ferrara on the occasion of his wife Veronica's entry into Il Foglio, a newspaper founded with Giuliano a few months earlier.

In the following years, in Brianza and Sardinia, whether or not they were in vogue, a confidential relationship was born, so much so that when he held a press conference at the Abi d'Oru hotel with Putin, his guest in the nearby Villa Certosa, on leaving he took a tray pottery that he liked, not without reassuring the staff present: "don't worry, this hotel belongs to a friend of mine".

There was a relationship of mutual respect. He appreciated the fact that I hadn't asked him for parliamentary seats or support for my entrepreneurial activity.

He had the fate of Sardinia at heart and offered me the candidacy for the presidency of the Region twice.

I was flattered, as is human and understandable. My answer was always the same: thank you, but I'm an entrepreneur, not a politician.

I understood his greatness better the second time, when he said something to me that I have never forgotten, something that only a very beautiful person could have said. More or less: "we entrepreneurs have a duty, at a certain point in our lives, to commit ourselves in favor of the community with the expertise and experience gained, generously placing them at the disposal of the public interest".

I was deeply impressed by it. He managed, unintentionally, to make me feel guilty, but I had confirmation that he really believed in the reasons for his entry into the field: to break the mold of a society blocked by ideological waste, in the process of perpetuating itself, and to spread the magic word that many would fascinated: FREEDOM.

However, the practical meaning with which he understood it was not appreciated by everyone, as the chronicles have told us, and he had to go through many troubles, to the satisfaction of his detractors, from the sometimes disordered use of his freedom, which, you know, it is not separated from obedience to the moral law, for example. And also to the penal law, however imperfect, in his case, however, applied, by the conviction of many, with double standards.

The fact remains that Silvio Berlusconi had new and courageous ideas, capable of subverting established patterns and paradigms, in urban quality as in television communication, in finance as in sport.

And he was an extraordinary successful entrepreneur and atypical political protagonist, an enemy of the cloying "theater" offered by the parties, as he often said, but himself a consummate actor and unattainable creator of consensus.

He has uncritically accepted "su connottu" in no field he has ventured into, not stopping at the judgment given before, at prejudice, and not caring too much about backbiters and wrong-thinkers, aware of having to suffer the hostility regardless of a part of society.

He was a dreamer, and he wanted to change the world for the better, shaping it according to the vision of an authentic liberal, possessing the virtue of perseverance in pursuing even daring goals.

He generously spent his intense life for his family, companies and, in politics, for his country, influencing the national order with the introduction of bipolarism, personalization of leaders in political-electoral marketing and in relations with his international counterparts; real revolutions introduced into a system until its static arrival, a prisoner of self-referential party and diplomatic liturgies.

He passed away just when his dream of bringing Italy's winning coalition model to the European scene could have been realised, coinciding with the next European elections.

The alliance between Popolari and Conservatives in Europe, in fact, on which President Meloni worked, in addition to imparting an acceleration in the liberal sense to European politics, would favor the ongoing consolidation of the recovery to the institutions of the political part heir to the nostalgics of a time that was , historically marginalized, unjustly, in national political life. With beneficial effects in the game of alternation between opposing sides, typical of a mature and aware democracy, firmly anchored to the European institutions.

He will not see that dream come true, even if he will be remembered as the original promoter, since 1994, when he managed to bring together conflicting political and personal sensitivities, up to the present day.

He was a strong-willed and dynamic man and easily got carried away by passions, able to fully enjoy the emotions that accompany them, for better or for worse.

He would have liked to change everything for the better, including Sardinia.

He loved our Island, of which he knew the sufferings and hardships suffered, sometimes surprising me with his in-depth knowledge of crucial issues such as landscape and environment, territorial continuity and infrastructural gap, and he was the head of the government a lot, as reported a few days ago by L'Unione Sardinian.

He was an intelligent and kind-hearted revolutionary, incapable of doing harm but capable and determined in trying to peacefully change the established order, making millions of people feel protagonists of the liberal revolution.

He left a lasting trace of his passage in earthly life, and will remain in the memory and in the hearts of millions of people.

Sergio Zuncheddu

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