IT’S all about him again. At 81, Silvio Berlusconi has a criminal record (for tax fraud) and is on trial yet again (for allegedly bribing witnesses). His party, Forza Italia, fared disastrously in a general election on March 4th. It won just 14% of the vote and Mr Berlusconi forfeited the leadership of the right to Matteo Salvini of the Northern League.
Yet as Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella launched a second round of talks on April 12th aimed at giving Italy a government, Mr Berlusconi was again central to his country’s fortunes, though not in the way he had hoped.
It had been widely expected that Mr Berlusconi would emerge as the post-election kingmaker: able to bless or block an alliance between his own centre-right party and the governing centre-left Democratic Party (PD). But the PD also did badly, scotching any prospect of a coalition with Forza Italia: the two together control barely a third of the seats in parliament.
Most attention instead now focuses on the...Continue reading
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