Thread by @DrAlbertazziUK

Another record for @berlusconi (tick), as the first leader ever to openly campaign via the media (this is one of the family's newspapers) to become Italy's President. "The friend of everyone, the enemy of no-one".

https://twitter.com/smenichini/status/1481533270861000707

Living aside the totally absurd claims made here, including that Berlusconi "ended the cold war".... here is a summary of why he should never be allowed near the Presidency, a serious role exercising real power (cerimonial it is not):

B. is a felon (tax fraud), who had to serve time "helping" in an old people's home because apparently too old to serve time in jail.

This puts into perspective his claim in the newspaper today that he is one of the greatest contributors to Italy's Treasury.

B. founded his own party with his close collaborator Dell'Utri, later convicted of Mafia association.

B. has been at war with the justice system since the beginning of time, attacking magistrates, denigrating their work & sometimes avoiding further convictions thanks to statute of limitation.

The President heads the independent body that governs the work of Italy's magistrates.

B. controls countless media. The fact that this conflict of interest between private interests and public duties has been there since he served as PM for the first time in the mid-1990s does not make it disappear now.

As PM, B. has passed several pieces of legislation to save himself from prosecution/avoid being hammered by the law, some of them quashed by the Constitutional Court.
This squarely contradicts principle that the law is the same for everyone (obvious point, but it remains true).

During his last stint as PM (2011) B. lost his majority in Parliament & had to resign after leading Italy to the brink, with international financial markets turning against him.

A President needs a little credibility. Despite the EPP's efforts to rehabilitate him, B has none.

B. IS an important political leader who has been the fulcrum of Italian politics for 15 years or so. He's played an important part in hushering in a bi-polar system in the country (left vs. right coalitions) which is still a feature of Italy today.

Those on the right are correct in identifying him as the man who has re-invented the right in the country, by bringing together the Social Movement with Bossi's League in 1994 -an alliance that remains the foundation of the right wing alliance today, if under different names.

Which takes me to my last point: "The friend of everyone, the enemy of no-one" is - if possible - even more preposterous than having ended the cold war.

For many years Italian politics was entirely determined by the B factor. You were either with him or against him, full stop.

Prodi's heterogeneous bandwagons brought together EVERYONE that did not want B. in govt (they had nothing else in common), while B. was leading the more homogenous & consistent right wing alliance.

While a President must be - by definition - someone able to bring the country together, B. is despised by half the population.

Before reinventing himself as the father of the nation (with the complicity of Italy's tabloids) he did not mind this at all.

In one of his many previous reincarnations, he has insulted the left & M5S, as well as everyone's intelligence, consistently and repeatedly (he only helped the minor "Ruby the Heartstealer".. because he thought she was the grandchild of Egypt's President Mubarak...).

There is in fact no-one in the country LESS suited to perform the role of Italy's President.

Salvini & Meloni know this, & electing a non-descript centrist would suits their agendas better. They cannot say this & they will not, but how are they going to instruct their people...

...to vote when the day comes, given that the vote is secret... we shall see. /END/

(H/t @GPMazzoleni for ruining my coffee this morning by sending me the original pic from which the thread originates...)