“Here I am, here for you, wearing a shirt and jacket for the first time in a month,” the billionaire media mogul said in this pre-recorded speech, played at a Congress of his right-wing Forza Italia party. .
Elegantly dressed, seated behind a desk with the party banner and the Italian flag behind him, he thanked his supporters for their support, “which more than anything helped me overcome a very dangerous pneumonia”.
Berlusconi was admitted to San Raffaele Hospital in Milan on April 5 suffering from a lung infection, after which doctors first indicated he had leukemia. He spent the first week and a half in intensive care.
He hoped to leave the establishment in time for his party’s two-day congress, which began Friday in Milan, a source from his training told AFP earlier this week.
But ultimately, he recorded his message in his hospital room on Friday, according to media reports.
Berlusconi’s doctors said Wednesday his condition was “stable” but did not say when he might be discharged from hospital.
Forza Italia is a partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government and Berlusconi, the party’s founder, remains its chairman. But despite being in the Senate, he is rarely seen in public.
He has been hospitalized several times in recent years, including after contracting Covid-19 in 2020.
Forza Italia has lost much of its support since its peak, when Berlusconi served as prime minister three times between 1994 and 2011 The latest YouTrend poll gives Forza Italia just 7% support, compared to nearly 29% for the party of the extreme right of the Brothers of Italy of Meloni.
In his message, Berlusconi said on Saturday that his party was the “backbone of this government”, present “to ensure that its decisions are really correct, fair, balanced”. In his 20-minute video, which was met with applause, he said he was ready to get back to work.