Berlusconi as president? The right-wing bloc in Italy sees no objections

The precarious health of Silvio Berlusconi, now 85, did not allow him to attend the hearings of his latest trial, which revolves around the charge that he bribed witnesses to lie about his sex parties. But actively lobbying to become president of Italy, Berlusconi succeeds.

He called dozens of MPs. “I am Mr. Bunga Bunga!” got Senator Bianca Laura Granato to hear on the phone. A joke here, maybe a promise there: Berlusconi is busy winning votes.

There is no time to lose: in Italy, the parliamentarians and deputies of the 20 regions will elect a new head of state from next week. The first round of voting for the successor to incumbent President Sergio Mattarella is on Monday, January 24.

The function is mainly ceremonial, but it is not just cutting ribbons. The Italian president appoints the prime minister, he can determine whether there will be elections by dissolving the parliament. Above all, however, the head of state is the ‘guardian of the nation’. That is why the political parties usually look for someone with moral authority.

moral authority

Media mogul Silvio Berlusconi may have been prime minister four times, but he is not of undisputed moral authority. During his premiership, Italy was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for returning boat people to Gaddafi’s Libya. With Berlusconi at the helm, parliament wrote laws tailored to Berlusconi. A close associate was convicted of ties to the Sicilian mafia. And Berlusconi himself ran into lawsuits dozens of times. He was convicted of tax fraud and given a years-long ban from holding public office, which was revoked in 2018.

Yet Berlusconi has “the authority and experience that Italy deserves,” says the right-wing bloc, which includes the right-wing Lega, the far-right Brothers of Italy, and of course Berlusconi’s own party, Forza Italia. On Friday, that coalition put Berlusconi forward as a centre-right candidate.

Former Prime Minister Enrico Letta, chairman of the center-left Partito Democratico, promptly said he was “stunned and disappointed”. The Five Star Movement also made it clear never to vote for ‘president’ Berlusconi. This makes it very unlikely that the state portrait of the legally troubled former prime minister will soon be hung in every court in the country – no political bloc alone has enough votes. But the fact that Berlusconi has been talked about for weeks now is bizarre enough for many Italians. “While we cry, the whole world laughs at us,” read one protest poster.

chalk lines

A significant part of the people shudder at the candidacy of ‘Mr. Bunga Bunga’ and fear for the credibility of the country, which Prime Minister Mario Draghi has so painstakingly restored. Over the past year, Draghi has outlined how the money from the European post-Covid recovery fund will be spent. Berlusconi’s last government was forced to resign in 2011 by international financial markets.

Yet Berlusconi is back in the spotlight. Though his electoral strength has dwindled, he still holds power on the right – according to most polls he would 17 percent of Italians manage to convince as ‘president’.

In 2019 he was elected to the European Parliament. There he has powerful allies, such as Manfred Weber. The group leader of the European People’s Party (EPP) assured Berlusconi in Rome last week that the EPP supports his presidential ambitions. Allies help each other, Weber hopes. The German Christian Democrat wants to succeed Donald Tusk as chairman of the EPP within a few months.

Also read this piece by correspondent Ine Roox on the favorite for the presidency, Mario Draghi