Berlusconi vows to stay in politics
ITALY: A typically unabashed Silvio Berlusconi vowed Saturday to stay
in politics to reform the very justice system that sentenced him to jail
for tax fraud, as the Italian press declared an emphatic end to the
billionaire former premier's long domination of the nation's political
scene.
“I feel obliged to stay in the (political) field to reform the planet
justice,” the media tycoon told TG5, one of the television stations he
runs, after branding Friday's verdict an “intolerable” political ruling.
“There are going to be consequences,” declared 67-year-old three-time
prime minister who first burst on to the Italian political scene almost
two decades ago.
A Milan court on Friday sentenced Berlusconi to four years in jail --
quickly reduced to one year under an amnesty law designed to tackle
overcrowding in prisons -- and banned him from holding public office for
five years.
The three-time premier had announced on on Wednesday that he would
not run in the next election due in the spring but did not say he was
withdrawing completely from political life.
“I will not be presenting my candidacy but I will remain at the side
of younger people who can play and score goals,” he said.
Italy's press nevertheless on Saturday declared that the Berlusconi
era was at a definitive end, with one observer drawing a parallel to the
fate of US gangster Al Capone. Berlusconi's lawyers said they would
lodge an appeal by November 10, and Italy's lengthy appeals process will
likely enable him to stave off both prison and political banishment.
“And so ends a Titanic affair, born in television and finished in
court, with a clear, very tough and above all insulting punishment,”
wrotecentre-left daily La Repubblica's editor, Ezio Mauro, retracing
Berlusconi's political trajectory from “supreme domination” to his “fall
from grace and definitive decline”.
“An entire generation of Italians born after 1975 will for the first
time vote in elections next spring that are not a pro- or
anti-Berlusconi referendum,” said the influential daily La Stampa. “The
mirages and alibis are finished,” it declared.
AFP |
