Sunday 15 September 2013

This is what Berlusconi should do, according to experts (and laymen)

Saturday, 14 September 2013. As Italy awaits the vote on the political future of Silvio Berlusconi, friends and foes send their advices to the former prime minister.


Silvio Berlusconi: in a real pickle?

Next Wednesday, 18 September 2013, a commission will vote on barring Silvio Berlusconi from the Senate of Italy for good: after the conviction for tax fraud the former prime minister finds himself in a pickle (Berlusconi is said to be in such a disheartened mood that somebody quoted him saying “it'd be better if I died”...)


Saturday 7 September 2013

Berlusconi is the target of a lobby plot, according to his daughter Barbara



Saturday, 7 September 2013. Barbara Berlusconi, in an interview with Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, says that a lobby is trying do to her father in.


Barbara Berlusconi in night dress with her father Silvio Berlusconi
Barbara Berlusconi with her father Silvio
Barbara Berlusconi was at the business workshop in Cernobbio's beautiful Villa d'Este, when she was reached by a quite unusual interviewer, the (former?) confidante of her mother Veronica Lario (the interview was published by Rome's newspaper Il Messaggero), asking Barbara to comment the Silvio Berlusconi's legal woes and take a stance in the entangled situation of Italian politics.

«The story of my father and of my family is not that of a handful of tax evaders. [...] The story of Silvio Berlusconi can not end in shame» she said, referring to the recent conviction of the media tycoon for tax fraud, «There are those who want to hunt my father from politics for their own interests.

Wednesday 4 September 2013

Berlusconi cross: Napolitano left him out of the life Senator's list


Thursday, 29 August 2013. Becoming a life Senator could have meant to Silvio Berlusconi a way out from legal woes, but Giorgio Napolitano did not include the former prime minister in the list of celebrities. Too bad.


An angry Berlusconi (Photograph: Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi)
Of course Berlusconi's People of Freedom party put all the pressure they could to get the former prime minister in the list of newly appointed life Senators, but in the end they had to cope with the fact that their leader will not be granted the honour, perhaps because he is not a former head of state nor a distinguished personality in the arts and sciences (nope, bunga-bunga parties do not count as achievement in arts).


Berlusconi did not take it well (actually he is cross!), since it could have meant cutting the Gordian knot in a situation where he doesn't seem to find a way out: in few days the parliament will be voting on his expulsion from the Senate, following his conviction for tax fraud, and he is more and more frightened by the prospect (nope, the European Court of Human Rights might not grant his salvation).