– Bunga Is Back: Berlusconi To Run In 2013 (ZeroHedge, July 11, 2012):
Back in November 2011, when Silvio was forced out of his PM position with a combination of plunging Italian bonds and strong globalist pressure in an attempt to restore confidence in the Italian economy and administration, and was replaced with a Goldman-affiliated technocrat, we said that it is only a matter of time before Monti fails in his task of turning the Italian economy around, and revisionist power vacuum forces put Silvio right back in his throne. Sure enough, Corriere writes that the man whoe made the term Bunga Bunga legendary may run for premier next year. Specifically, the ex-prime minister may seek top job in a “ticket” together with his party’s current leader Angelino Alfano, quoting him as saying that this is “A choice that I didn’t want to make.” Berlusconi’s PDL party could garner 30% of vote in next election if the ex-premier seeks top job, Corriere says, without elaborating. Of course, what guaranteed that he would run was his statement last year that he would not run in the next election, making this outcome a foregone conclusion. And the funny thing is that he just may win.
From Corriere:
He has spent the last few weeks to study the surveys, to analyze the scenarios for the vote in 2013, listening to the PDL leaders, entrepreneurs and international representatives. But ultimately the decision is made: be standing for re-election as premier.
The role of noble father does not heat his constituents who ask a more direct engagement, the engagement she had ruled at the time of the investiture of Angelino Alfano as secretary of the PDL. The latest polls, arrived on his desk, some data have shown that, according to Knight, one can not ignore. Three scenarios submitted to respondents: a PDL without Berlusconi would not reach 10% of the votes and the nomination of the premiership Alfano, Berlusconi in the field as party chairman, would lead to a result around 18%. If, however, Berlusconi was still in the running for the presidency of the Council, in a ticket with Alfano and a team of young executives, the polls would arrive, according to surveys, including a 30%. A result that might not be enough to win the leadership of the country but would give the Knight and his party a decisive role in the next term, especially if you come to a coalition government called upon to continue the path of fiscal consolidation and exit from economic crisis.
The two summer months serve to prepare the new descent into the field (“a choice that I wanted to do but to which I have been pushing the polls, hundreds of letters and messages of the people of the moderates”). Berlusconi to give up vacation at Villa Certosa in Sardinia and will remain in Arcore just to get to September with all the papers ready: a new name to the party (which will recall the origins of Forza Italy), a team of forty to promote the new political adventure, consultations with international leaders with whom he maintained relations, the identification of candidates capable of winning votes in the territory.
Berlusconi is concerned for a PDL in the grip of “personalism,” a nomenclature which is growing too interested in the defense of their share of power. You see more and more disillusioned moderate voters who take refuge in abstaining or even swell the ranks of grillismo.
Certainly will not be easy. There is first of all to preserve the relationship with Alfano, Berlusconi believes that the “very good” and why he wants to maintain a leading role. It is to dismantle the machinery of the primary would be meaningless if the founder of the party for re-election. Then weigh the processes are still open, especially on the Ruby case, even if the Knight is convinced, after the last hearings, that “things will go well.”
And finally there is to develop an economic program that “optimism returns to a country gripped by a crisis of confidence.” A difficult game, inside and outside the party, on the edge of the impossible almost twenty years after first taking the field