Italy’s Berlusconi vows to remain political force despite ousting

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Silvio Berlusconi was ousted from the Italian Senate but remained defiant to the very end, vowing to remain a political force in spite of the shame of leaving elected office with a criminal conviction.

At a rally in Rome before the Senate vote in the late afternoon Wednesday, Mr. Berlusconi, who is 77 and was prime minister three times since 1994, promised to "remain in the field" as leader of the revived, though small, Forza Italia – Go Italy – party. He said he would "continue to fight for our freedom" as a centre-right leader amid rumours that he will try to use all his powers to bring down the fragile coalition government of prime minister Enrico Letta.

One of Mr. Berlusconi's most loyal and powerful allies, Renato Brunetta, said: "Silvio Berlusconi has suffered a political assassination but is far from dead." Several political commentators agreed that billionaire media mogul will, at minimum, be able to sway public opinion through his family's control of Italy's biggest commercial broadcasting networks.

"Even when it's over, it's not over," said James Walston, the political blogger who is professor of international relations at the American University of Rome.

Mr. Berlusconi's expulsion from the Senate came after a series of increasingly desperate attempts to protect both his status as a parliamentarian and the political immunity that, with the help of the most expensive legal team in the country, allowed him to stay one step ahead of the prosecutors who launched a seemingly endless stream of cases against him.

While the vote to push the convicted tax felon out of government was expected, Mr. Berlusconi did not go with good grace. Claiming he was the victim of a coup d'état engineered by left-wing forces that were determined to crush him since the moment he was first elected, Mr. Berlusconi told his supporters in Rome it was "a day of mourning" for Italian democracy.

Mr. Berlusconi did not attend the late afternoon Senate vote, saying he had no intention of facing what he termed the "firing squad." After addressing about 1,000 supporters outside his Rome residence, he returned to his Milan villa, the site of the infamous "bunga bunga" parties that landed him a conviction – under appeal – for paying for sex with a minor. The Senate vote came almost four months after his conviction for tax fraud, his first definitive conviction in two decades of virtually non-stop legal battles. He was sentenced to four years in prison, which was commuted to one year of community service. Under an anti-corruption law passed in 2012, felons are not allowed to hold public office.

His ouster strips him of his parliamentary immunity, bans him from holding public office for six years and exposes him to arrest and possibly immediate imprisonment in a criminal case in Naples which accuses him of bribing senators to bring down the government of Romano Prodi in 2008. Mr. Berlusconi won that election and remained in office until late 2011, when he was effectively pushed out at the height of the Italian debt crisis.

Despite the scandals and conviction, Mr. Berlusoni remains popular among millions of Italians, some of who, like Mr. Berlusconi himself, are convinced the Italian judiciary is a political animal that was bent on destroying him.

"I have my doubts that he is really guilty of tax fraud," said Andrea de Muzo, 50, the owner of a souvenir shop in central Milan. "I didn't hate him. We Italians are a lot like him – we're show-offs."

Mr. Berlusconi, who has claimed his is the most prosecuted leader in European history, spent the last few weeks working furiously to keep his Senate seat and prevent his old Popolo della Liberta – People of Freedom – party from splintering down the middle. That effort failed when many of his top lieutenants abandoned him and started their own centre-right party.

His effort included pleading for a pardon from Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, which was outright denied, and endless calls for the Senate to suspend the vote. Over the weekend, his gambit to overturn his tax fraud conviction – the case that was directly responsible for his ouster – reached fever pitch when he produced evidence that he claimed could overturn his conviction. That too carried no weight with Italian magistrates and the Senate.

Mr. Berlusconi's explusion is expected to have virtually no impact on investors, who has fully expected his departure. Nicholas Shapiro, managing director of the Shapiro Sovereign Strategy consultancy in London said that "Berlusconi lost his ability to spook the markets a long time ago. The vote…is a distraction from the underlying problems facing Italy's recession-stricken economy."