The night of November 12, 2011, Silvio Berlusconi resigned What Prime Minister from Italy. And his departure could not have been more stormy. With flags flying, music, boos, and shouts of ‘bye-bye Silvio ‘, hundreds of Italian citizens celebrated the departure from the scene of the man who 17 long years had influenced the life of the country, which had been implicated in prostitute scandals, had passed dozens of laws for his personal benefit, concerned the European Union, and had been accused of countless crimes, since the fiscal fraud, to the senators purchase, passing by bribes to judges And till ties to the mafia.
Still, the roots of Berlusconi’s political renaissance, at least within the right, were always there. The most obvious of all: the fact that the magnate and politician did not have a natural heir, nor that, within the allied formations, there were figures capable of occupying his position. So it has been. 10 years after those events, the Berlusconi name is today in the pools to succeed Sergio Mattarella, the Republic President, who will leave the post in February and whose institutional position is the highest in the country. The scandals seem faded. The mistakes, forgiven.
So much so that, despite his known health problems – his colleagues have come to say that he cannot walk without help, and his same lawyers have repeatedly emphasized his health to avoid his court hearings -, Berlusconi, 85, has been campaigning for months with the aim of seizing the presidency of the Republic. He has posted pictures of him with his current partner, 53 years younger that he, on social networks, and, on more than one occasion, has received leaders of the allied parties in their mansions in Rome and Milan. Everything, under the spotlight.
“He’s a patriot”
“He is a patriot”, justified Antonio Tajani, former president of the European Parliament and one of the main defenders of Berlusconi’s candidacy. Even this week the old politician, founder from Come on Italy, plans to hold various meetings to promote its strategy, among others, with its main allies, the Liga de Matteo Salvini y Hermanos de Italia de Giorgia Meloni. This after receiving the blessing of the secretary of the European People’s Party, the Spanish Antonio López-Istúriz, who went so far as to say that Italy would be “invincible” like Berlusconi as president, and in which Mario Draghi remains the prime minister.
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This return of the tycoon, however, has also returned to Italy the incandescent climate of when Berlusconi ruled, and his detractors opposed it with great fervor. “EL NO”, written like this, in capital letters, has starred on the front page of the progressive weekly L’Espresso, whose director, Marco Damilano, ventured that the situation is the result of the “total confusion” of the Italian parties. “Why Berlusconi cannot be president”, outraged citizens have explained in manifestos. And even the situation has once again resuscitated the call Pueblo Violeta, a group born a decade ago with the sole purpose of overthrowing Berlusconi. A few days ago, members of this movement returned to the streets in Rome to ask that Berlusconi not be chosen as the new tenant of the Quirinal, the seat of the Italian presidency.
To be chosen, the new president of the Republic You will need a two-thirds majority than in the first three votes or, from the fourth, a simple majority. And it is this arithmetic, in addition to the secret vote and the fact that no party has a majority, that makes it impossible to make sure forecasts for January 24, the date on which Parliament will begin voting to elect the new president. Analysts, however, have also added a novel element that explains why this uncertainty and the return of Berlusconi: the fear that an Italy without Draghi as head of government will once again be, as it has been so many times, on the brink of the abyss.
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