Berlusconi: “I’ve Made Up My Mind - I Won’t Be Running Again Primaries in the PDL by the End of the Year”

“I’m pulling out, for love of Italy, in the same spirit in which I entered politics...”

The uncertainty in the PDL is over: Berlusconi has decided that he will not be running for prime minister again. And he is asking the party he founded to choose, for the first time, a new leader in primary elections. “Love for Italy can lead you to do mad things, but wise ones too,” he said in a statement. “Eighteen years ago I joined the political fray, a mad move not without its wisdom, but now I'd rather take a back seat for the same reasons that drove me to take a leading role then. I won’t be running for prime minister again, but I’ll be supporting the youngsters who need to bring home a result. I’m still strong and have got ideas, but my role now is to give advice, offer my experience, and to express my opinion without being intrusive”. It is precisely Berlusconi’s announcement of primaries, for which he has also suggested a possible date, 16 December, that gives the impression that his decision not to run for Palazzo Chigi is final.

THE HANDOVER - Berlusconi went on to say that “A left-wing coalition that aims to go back to the centralized approach to planning that has produced the mountain of public debt and the corporative, lazy country we know so well, intends to govern with a band of professional politicians educated and trained according to the outdated egalitarian, solidaritarian and collectivist ideologies of the 20th century. It’s up to the People of Freedom, to its secretary Angelino Alfano, and to the younger generation to repeat the miracle of 1994, to wage a serious, committed battle against them and bring an end to this downwards slide”.

SUPPORT FOR MONTI - Berlusconi then defended last year’s “difficult yet responsible decision” to support a technical government, and entrust the “provisional leadership of the country” to Mario Monti, “the embodiment of a country that has never engaged in witch-hunts”. Berlusconi feels that the current government has made “mistakes”, some of which may however be “remedied”, “such as amendments to the economic stability law and questionable fiscal measures”.

English translation by Simon Tanner

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