Berlusconi, 85, tipped for one final tilt at Italy’s top job
ALL political lives end in failure unless, apparently, you are Silvio Berlusconi.
Italy’s presidential elections next month are likely to be the last chance for the octogenarian billionaire and his supporters are hoping he will cap off his extraordinary, scandal-plagued career with the ultimate accolade of seeing him in the country’s top post.
“It would be a dream,” Antonio Tajani, the deputy leader of Berlusconi’s conservative Forza Italia party, told The Sunday Telegraph. “A lot of us have asked him [to run]. When you bring up the subject with him, he just smiles.”
Berlusconi, 85, holds the record as Italy’s longest-serving post-war prime minister. He’s been in office three times, and before politics he made billions in real estate and television broadcasting, and turned AC Milan into the world’s most successful football club. He now presents himself as the elder statesman within Italy’s Right-wing bloc, dominated by firebrand populists such as Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni.
Nowadays, Berlusconi rarely appears in public, preferring to communicate via video and audio messages, or written interviews. In 2016, he underwent open-heart surgery. Last year, he was hospitalised with Covid. Appearing at a conference in Brussels in October, he looked on good form, but his hearing seemed impaired as he struggled with questions during a press conference.
Mr Tajani described him as “an extraordinary captain of industry, a great man of sport… and a great political leader”. But Berlusconi, the man who once called the former US president Barack Obama “suntanned”, accused Germans of Holocaust denial, and claimed Chinese Communists used to boil babies, is also a byword for scandal, gaffes, and run-ins with the law.
Presidents have a lot of ceremonial duties, but step in whenever there is a political crisis, a fairly frequent occurrence in Rome. They act as kingmakers to any new government, they oversee the judiciary and are party to sensitive intelligence and defence matters. With Berlusconi, Italy would gain a head of state with a criminal record, thanks to his 2013 conviction for tax fraud. He would also be a president on trial, as he is still facing criminal charges related to the infamous “bunga bunga” affair, which he denies.
The case saw the former premier indicted for soliciting sex from an underage prostitute known as “Ruby the Heart Stealer”. He was cleared on appeal, but he was put on trial again, before three separate courts, on suspicion he bribed defence witnesses.
One trial ended with an acquittal in October; two are still pending.
Nevertheless, his fans insist his bid for the presidency – which carries a seven-year mandate – is serious.
Presidents are elected in a secret ballot by around 1,000 national and regional lawmakers. Voting is due to start around Jan 20. “He has a 50-50 chance to make it,” Gianfranco Rotondi, a veteran Forza Italia MP who was a minister in Berlusconi’s last government, in 2008-11, told The Telegraph.
Berlusconi has not officially thrown his hat into the ring, but is campaigning behind the scenes. The Right-wing bloc, consisting of Forza Italia plus Mr Salvini’s Northern League and Ms Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, is expected to back him, at least initially.
The coalition commands around 450 votes, short of a majority. Lorenzo Castellani, a political historian at Rome’s Luiss university, predicts that Berlusconi’s candidacy will peter out. Nevertheless, he expects him to be “one of the kingmakers” in the presidential race. “He is too smart to believe” he can get it for himself, Mr Castellani said.
Mario Draghi, the current prime minister, is seen as the front-runner. Another credible option is for the sitting president, Sergio Mattarella, to stay on, though he has said he wants to retire.
Whatever the outcome, Mr Tajani said Berlusconi had no intention of leaving politics. “Why should he retire? He will always be the founding father of the centre-Right.”