SILVIO BERLUSCONI was battling to keep his ailing Forza Italia party alive yesterday after recent high-profile defections left it scrambling to survive.

His candidate in May’s Puglia gubernatorial election Sandro Bondi defected on Saturday to a faction headed by one-time ally Raffaele Fitto.

Successive desertions have left the former Italian prime minister, despite some recent legal victories, unable to bring Forza Italia out of fourth place in the polls, in which it is only taking about 12 to 13 per cent of the vote.

Mr Fitto declared at the weekend that some 9 million Forza Italia voters were “fleeing a party without a serious and credible political line.”

He said: “There’s a bunker mentality around Silvio Berlusconi, where a handful of self-proclaimed leaders make decisions about people policy.”

The billionaire media mogul landed on Italy’s political scene in 1994 and dominated it for two decades until a 2013 tax fraud conviction resulted in him being kicked out of the Senate.

He continued leading Forza Italia while carrying out his sentence — community service at a home for the aged — but struggled to keep it from coming apart at the seams as he negotiated a now-broken pact with Premier Matteo Renzi.

Mr Berlusconi got a boost last month when the court upheld his acquittal in the “bunga bunga” sex-for-hire case, but he remains under investigation in a case over allegations he paid off witnesses.

by Our Foreign Desk