Berlusconi slams Alfano, Renzi and courts in interview

Calls former protégé 'a crutch for the government'

(ANSA) - Rome, May 12 - Ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi lashed out at the courts, "professional" politicians including his former protégé Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, and Premier Matteo Renzi in an interview Monday. And the leader of the centre-right Forza Italia (FI) political party said that despite all of their interference, his integrity would be "restored" and he will be fully back in political life "in no time". In an interview with one of his Mediaset television channels, Berlusconi repeated his longstanding claims that left-wing courts made rulings, reaching as high as Italy's top appeals court, designed to push him out of politics.

A definitive ruling last year for massive tax fraud at his Mediaset empire stripped Berlusconi of his Senate seat and has banned him from standing in this month's European Parliament election. "(The rulings) are what the left has tried to do to me since '94," Berlusconi, 77, said in the interview, only days after he began serving a year of community service at a nursing home as part of his sentence. "I'm sure that in no time I will be given back my full integrity," he added. He also dismissed his former protégé Alfano, who split with Berlusconi late last year to form the New Centre Right (NCD), and others who left the FI for the NCD as untrustworthy professional politicians and said he was well rid of them.

He called Alfano "a crutch for the government" by supporting Renzi and thus helping the Democratic Party (PD) remain in power. "I would not count any more on professional politicians, but luckily the professionals, all the old political actors," have gone to the NCD, said Berlusconi, who also had harsh words for Renzi, saying he felt "pessimistic" about the PD leader.

He also condemned Renzi for taking the premier's post away from former PD premier Enrico Letta following a decision by the PD membership in February to give Renzi the job. "If I had done this, there would be a revolution," said Berlusconi. The three-time former premier has been flirting with trouble by criticizing the courts, after he was warned that his penalty could be increased to house arrest, removing his freedom to continue political activities, if he defames judges.

In Berlusconi's first-ever binding conviction in 20 years of legal entanglements, the supreme Court of Cassation sentenced him to four years in prison last year for the 370-million-euro tax fraud. Three years of the sentence were commuted by an amnesty because of his age.