This is what Berlusconi should do, according to experts (and laymen)

Saturday, 14 September 2013. As Italy awaits the vote on the political future of Silvio Berlusconi, friends and foes send their advices to the former prime minister.

Silvio Berlusconi: in a real pickle?

Next Wednesday, 18 September 2013, a commission will vote on barring Silvio Berlusconi from the Senate of Italy for good: after the conviction for tax fraud the former prime minister finds himself in a pickle (Berlusconi is said to be in such a disheartened mood that somebody quoted him saying “it'd be better if I died”...)

Berlusconi cross: Napolitano left him out of the life Senator's list

Thursday, 29 August 2013. Becoming a life Senator could have meant to Silvio Berlusconi a way out from legal woes, but Giorgio Napolitano did not include the former prime minister in the list of celebrities. Too bad.

An angry Berlusconi (Photograph: Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi)

Of course Berlusconi's People of Freedom party put all the pressure they could to get the former prime minister in the list of newly appointed life Senators, but in the end they had to cope with the fact that their leader will not be granted the honour, perhaps because he is not a former head of state nor a distinguished personality in the arts and sciences (nope, bunga-bunga parties do not count as achievement in arts).

Berlusconi did not take it well (actually he is cross!), since it could have meant cutting the Gordian knot in a situation where he doesn't seem to find a way out: in few days the parliament will be voting on his expulsion from the Senate, following his conviction for tax fraud, and he is more and more frightened by the prospect (nope, the European Court of Human Rights might not grant his salvation).