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Italy’s iconic ex-PM announces comeback — Analysis

Italy’s political heavyweight Silvio Berlusconi, who was the country’s prime minister for four terms, has announced that he’ll run for Senate in the snap election next month.

“I think I’ll run for the Senate,”Berlusconi is now the leader of Forza Italia’s center-right party. He spoke to Rai Radio 1 on Wednesday.

He said that the move was made after he became a media tycoon at 85 years old. “receiving pressure from so many, even outside Forza Italia,”And expressed hopes that it would “make everyone happy.”

An advertising campaign was launched at the same time as this announcement. Billboards featured a photograph of Berlusconi younger looking and a slogan. “Now more than ever, pick a side,”You will find them at subway and train stations all over the country.

Berlusconi, who is Italy’s longest-serving prime minister since dictator Benito Mussolini, had been absent from the country’s political scene since 2013, when he was sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud and barred from holding public office.

In 2018, the court lifted the ban, and the veteran politician became a member of the European Parliament (MEP), one year later.


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Berlusconi has unresolved legal questions as he is on trial for bribing witnesses in an earlier case where he was charged with paying for sex to an underage prostitute. This charge was dropped in 2014.

Italy will hold a snap election in September 25 to reflect the fall of Mario Draghi’s government, which was formed after the opposition members withdrew support from the prime minister.

Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is running in coalition with two rightist parties, Giorgia Meloni’s ‘Brothers of Italy’, which is currently leading in the polls, and ‘Lega Nord’, led by Matteo Salvini, who was deputy PM between 2018 and 2019.

It is likely that the trio will win with confidence, opening the doors to Meloni. “God, country, and family,”Who would be the first female head of the Italian government?

Berlusconi answered the question about this possibility by saying, “We have always said that whoever has the most votes will be proposed to the head of state as the candidate-premier. If it is Giorgia Meloni, I am sure that she will prove adequate for the difficult task.”

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