Berlusconi Senate ejection makes global headlines
(ANSA) – Rome, November 27 – News that the Italian Senate on Wednesday voted to eject three-time premier Silvio Berlusconi over a tax-fraud conviction made global news media headlines.
“Italy’s Senate expels ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi” was the BBC headline.
“Berlusconi, who has dominated politics for 20 years, could now face arrest over other criminal cases as he has lost his immunity from prosecution”, wrote the UK public broadcaster.
“The Senate expels Berlusconi after his tax fraud conviction”, was Spain’s El Pais newspaper full-page headline. “After two decades in the spotlight of Italian politics, Senators voted the end of Il Cavaliere, who was sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud”, the newspaper said.
Berlusconi is known as Cavaliere (knight) because of a ‘knight of labour’ award as job-creating businessman.
CNN called Berlusconi “Italy’s most colourful political figure” and asked: “Is this the end for Il Cavaliere?” “Berlusconi Expelled from Senate in Italy”, was the one-column New York Times headline.
“Having spent months manufacturing procedural delays or conjuring political melodrama, Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday could no longer stave off the inevitable: Italy’s senate stripped him of his parliamentary seat, a dramatic and humiliating expulsion, even as other troubles loom on his horizon”, the American paper said.
Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) said the vote was a heavy blow to a career that started with his first election to premier in 1994 while Die Welt blazed the news across its website and Der Spiegel put a huge picture of Berlusconi up, captioned: “The Senate throws Berlusconi out”.
France’s Le Figaro was among the many papers that flashed the news across its banner.