Italy ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi. AFP.
Rome: Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, known for his infamous ‘bunga bunga’ parties with young starlets, was in intensive care on Wednesday for heart problems.
Widely known as the “Cavaliere”, the 86-year-old Italian senator remained a dominant player in his nation’s politics for two decades.
Berlusconi is admitted to Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital, a member of his entourage was quoted as saying by AFP.
As per a report by Italian news agency Ansa, Berlusconi was admitted early Wednesday and that his current condition was “stable”.
Leader of the right-wing Forza Italia party, Berlusconi has been in and out of the hospital in recent years. Last month he spent four days at the same hospital for what Italian news reports called heart issues.
“I have already started working again… ready and determined to commit myself, as I have always done, to the country I love”, he said in a message posted on social networks on Friday. He was discharged on 30 March.
He also posted a photo of himself on Sunday grinning in front of a vast lawn of tulips in his villa in Arcore, in northern Italy.
‘Ordeal’
In September 2020, Berlusconi was hospitalised for 11 days for Covid-related pneumonia. He had contracted the virus while on holiday in Sardinia.
The following year, Covid-related complications caused a series of hospital stays.
Berlusconi, who started his political career in 1994, served as prime minister three times. He had open heart surgery in 2016 and three years later, he underwent surgery on his intestine.
Forza Italia is a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing coalition government, although the party attracts only about 10 percent of voters.
Matteo Salvini, whose League party is also a member of the coalition, tweeted get well wishes Wednesday, saying “Forza Silvio, Italy is waiting for you!”
Berlusconi won a seat in Italy’s Senate during general elections in September, nine years after he was kicked out from the upper house of parliament following a conviction on tax fraud.
He said he would act as a political fatherly figure to Meloni, but has made headlines instead for his refusal to cut ties with his longtime friend Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Berlusconi entered politics in 1994 and for millions of Italians he represented a golden age of the Italian economy and the self-made man.
He has held a soft spot in many Italians’ hearts since then, despite a series of sex scandals and court cases that threatened to tarnish his image.
In his most high-profile case, Berlusconi was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2013 for paying for sex with Karima El-Mahroug, known as “Ruby the Heart Stealer”.
It was later overturned after the judge said there was reasonable doubt that he knew she was underage.
He celebrated his latest legal victory as recently as February, when he was acquitted of bribing witnesses to lie about his notorious “bunga bunga” parties, after arguing that he showered the starlets with money and gifts out of pure generosity.
With inputs from AFP
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