Election win sees Berlusconi bounce back

AFTER “bunga bunga” sex scandals and corruption allegations, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s former prime minister, looked set for a remarkable political comeback yesterday as his centre-right coalition swept to victory in regional elections in Sicily.

At the contest, seen as a barometer of Italian voting intentions for a possible spring general election, the candidate for governor of Sicily, backed by Mr Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, won 39 per cent of the vote on the island, according to projections. The Democratic Party of Matteo Renzi, the former premier, received a humiliating 19 per cent.

Mr Berlusconi claimed much of the credit himself, despite immigration policy and events in the Mediterranean that brought thousands of refugees flooding into Sicily thought by others to be the major factors.

Forced to resign in 2011 over Italy’s debt crisis and revelations of risqué parties involving starlets, Mr Berlusconi had been written off politically. Despite a ban on high office, he is still likely to loom large over the next government.