Berlusconi uses the electoral campaign to launch his revenge against the judges who put him on the ropes

On January 26, 1994, a little-known Silvio Berlusconi uttered a phrase that was broadcast on all Italian channels and changed the history of the country "Italy is the country I love."

It was his first major incursion into national politics, which he himself baptized as the "entrance to the field", to a playing field that he has not left in almost 30 years.

Berlusconi swept those elections in a country still reeling from the

(Clean Hands) corruption scandal, which wiped out the main parties and forced the rest to reinvent themselves.

At that moment, Berlusconi knew how to be the right man at the right time and stand out with a new language in the midst of a completely fragmented political offer.

In the fiery electoral campaign for the elections on September 25,

85 years old and still active as president of the conservative party he founded, Forza Italia — returns with the same staging of 1994 to present himself as head of the list of his training.

But he now drags innumerable pending accounts and a certain aroma of revenge for the political and judicial setbacks of recent years.

The tycoon has dusted off his old workhorses and has uncovered his desire for revenge for his great lost causes.

This week, in his "pills of the day" — campaign videos he posts on social media: election ads were banned from television 22 years ago to prevent Berlusconi from flooding Mediaset channels with election propaganda — the three-time prime minister of Italy and now MEP has charged against justice, one of his great personal crusades.

And he has promised that if the right rules, the acquittal sentences cannot be appealed by prosecutors or the prosecution.

"Thousands of people are arrested and put on trial despite being innocent," he has launched.

Already when he was prime minister in 2006 he tried a similar reform, which was rejected by the Constitutional Court.

In this campaign, Berlusconi has also exposed his desire for revenge in the Senate, from where he was expelled nine years ago after his conviction for tax fraud, which marked his end in Parliament after 20 years of continuous presence.

And he has announced that in the elections he will present his candidacy for this House.

“I have received pressure from many people, also from outside Forza Italia, to introduce myself”, he has slipped.

"It's a mix of revenge and ambition," sums it up Gianfranco Pasquino, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna.

“What Berlusconi knows how to do best is an electoral campaign.

Governing is something else.

He keeps repeating many things from the past and a part of Italy believes them.

He pours his personal experiences into his proposals, especially in relation to justice”, says Professor Pasquino.

Berlusconi's words have provoked a storm of criticism among judges, magistrates and prosecutors, a group that has always been in his sights.

Roberto D'Alimonte, a political scientist and professor at the Free International University of Guido Carli in Rome, where he founded the Italian Center for Electoral Studies (CISE), believes that the Forza Italia leader's proposals "reflect his idea that justice is in hands of magistrates who want to use it for political purposes” and points out that Berlusconi wants to “limit the power of judges”.

Berlusconi has behind him a long history of legal cases for reasons of all kinds, with a trail of investigations, accusations, appeals and acquittals.

His file also contains a sentence of four years in prison and five years of political disqualification for tax fraud for the sale of film rights for Mediaset.

The sentence was reduced to one year by application of a 2006 pardon law, promoted by his own government, and the Italian tycoon did not have to go to jail because of his age.

Later, he commuted the punishment to a year of social services caring for the elderly in a residence.

In 2018 a court in Milan rehabilitated him for politics.

The accusations of having promoted laws and judicial reforms to favor his private interests have been a constant in the tycoon's career.

On the other hand, he has always felt persecuted and has presented himself as a victim of "unfair judicial cruelty."

“His insistence on issues related to justice has to do with his personal history.

He has always considered himself a victim and has never forgiven his alleged persecutors, ”says Marco Tarchi, professor at the Cesare Alfieri School of Political Science at the University of Florence.

And he adds: “To this is added the fact that his age makes him speak freely, without inhibitions.

However, I don't think his allies - especially the ultra-conservative leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni,

favorite in the polls - follow him in this controversy.

On the contrary, I think they are worried about the boomerang effect that these rash statements could cause.”

Rematch in the Senate

“Running for the Senate is a way of showing Italians that his expulsion was a mistake, a political choice.

He is looking for a revenge on those who expelled him”, values ​​D'Alimonte.

The media in Italy indicate that the leader of La Liga, Matteo Salvini, convinced him so that his party would contribute to overthrowing Mario Draghi's government by offering him the presidency of the Senate.

“As president of the Senate, the second position in the state, he would start from a more favorable position to be elected president of the Republic, his great dream that he has never abandoned,” says D'Alimonte.

For Berlusconi, his downfall of Draghi was a political opportunity, but it also had an element of revenge.

The longest-serving prime minister in modern Italy has always boasted that it was he who placed the prestigious economist at the helm of the Bank of Italy and does not forgive him for not coming to his aid when he was forced to resign as Prime Minister in 2011 after the European Union and the markets asked the then President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, for his head in exchange for reaching out to a bankrupt Italy.

“I don't think Draghi was the target of him, but Berlusconi thinks that others have been ungenerous with him: it is a constant psychological trait in him.

And, of course, the popularity that Draghi has enjoyed can only make him jealous,

One of Berlusconi's great unfulfilled dreams is to become President of the Republic.

He has tried unsuccessfully on several occasions, most recently in January this year.

Now, in the middle of the electoral campaign, he has returned to the subject and has proposed a constitutional reform of the Head of State so that it is elected by direct vote of the citizens as opposed to the current system, which falls to Parliament.

In addition, he has slipped that if this reform materializes, the current president, Sergio Mattarella, should resign.

The idea of ​​a resignation of Mattarella, who in January reluctantly announced that he was still in office due to the lack of agreement in Parliament to find him a successor, was criticized by the rest of the rival political forces.

The octogenarian tycoon, who will turn 86 four days after the elections, attends the elections in the right-wing coalition, favorite in the polls, with two far-right parties, La Liga and Brothers of Italy, who are ahead of him in voting intention.

The alliance has already explained that if they win the elections, the party with the most votes in the group will propose the name of the prime minister.

Although Berlusconi, a priori, has no options for it, since the polls give him around 9%, his role, surrounded by ultras, could be crucial.

“Berlusconi represents the most pro-European wing, he has an important function, that of mitigating the anti-Europeanism of Meloni and Salvini;

he has the mission of keeping the coalition anchored in Europe”, explains Roberto D'Alimonte.

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