Berlusconi's phone is overheating!

Ex-Prime Minister before comeback as the most powerful man in Italy

Created: 01/15/2022, 22:27

By: Jonas Raab

Italy's ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi wants to know it again: he is running for president.

© ZUMA Wire/imago

Silvio Berlusconi wants to become Italy's President and is banging the drum.

Manfred Weber sings a hymn of praise to the ex-Prime Minister and is criticized for it.

Rome – Bunga-Bunga sex parties, mafia contacts and bribery affair: Silvio Berlusconi (85) went down in recent history in Italy as a scandalous prime minister. After a court-ordered break of two years, including social service in a retirement home, the political zampano is back. After surviving a corona infection, he has long since been back in the saddle. He is the head of his party Forza Italia, sits in the European Parliament and is now flirting with the highest office in the boot state.

In Italy - as in Germany - the election of a new president is pending.

The first ballot in Rome is scheduled for January 24th.

Neither of the political camps currently has a majority.

The centre-right parties are nominating Silvio Berlusconi.

According to experts, the ex-boss of AC Milan is currently missing around 60 votes.

He is currently trying to change that by calling Parliament.

Presidential election in Italy: Silvio Berlusconi is flirting with Italy's comeback - and is therefore on the phone a lot

As the

reports, Luciano Nobili, MP for the Italia Viva party, recently received a surprising call from Berlusconi on his smartphone. Although the 85-year-old had dialed the wrong number - he actually wanted to campaign for his election to a former member of the Five Star Movement - such phone calls are currently not an isolated case.

Enrico Letta, chairman of the social-democratic PD, knows about Berlusconi's hot leadership.

"I know," he says.

Parliamentarians in his group have also received calls from the former head of state in the past few days.

With good reason: the Social Democrats recently made it clear, like the populist Five Star Movement, that they would not vote for Berlusconi.

Giuseppe Conte, five-star party leader and predecessor of current Prime Minister Mario Draghi, recently described Berlusconi's candidacy as an "unthinkable option".

Silvio Berlusconi soon to be President?

"One of the most important taxpayers in Italy"

Although only members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate as well as representatives of the regions (1,009 electors) vote in the Italian presidential election, Berlusconi is also trying to win the favor of the population. According to

, the newspaper

, owned by Berlusconi's brother Paolo,

ran a full-page advertisement on Thursday (13 January) with the centre-right candidate's likeness and a 22-point list of praise: "A good and generous man", "Former president of a successful football club" and "one of the most important taxpayers in Italy" is written in it.

So Berlusconi is serious about his comeback – and he's getting encouragement from Lower Bavaria.

"As group leader of the European People's Party, I support Berlusconi for the presidency of the republic because he has shown that he has the awareness to hold office," CSU Europe politician Manfred Weber told the Italian newspaper

.

Berlusconi was a spirit of his time, party leader and prime minister.

Manfred Weber criticized after Berlusconi ad: “Common cause with the right-wing enemies”

The SPD criticized Weber's support for Berlusconi.

The fact that the EPP parliamentary group leader is giving his blessing to a candidacy that is also supported by right-wing extremist forces is more than strange, said parliamentary group leader Achim Post.

Post told Berlusconi that there must be a unanimous attitude among democrats not to do "common things with the radical right-wing enemies of democracy".

He emphasized: "I expect a clear distancing, especially from Friedrich Merz as the new CDU chairman."