Silvio Berlusconi has promised that he has joined TikTok to woo voters, not young women.
The former Italian prime minister, 85, who notoriously held “bunga-bunga” parties for young models, made his TikTok debut this month in an effort to attract the youth vote before Italian elections.
In a video posted on Tuesday, Berlusconi told his 530,000 followers to work hard at school, then added: “Now I turn to those who are over 18. To ask what? To introduce me to your girlfriends? Not at all! To ask you to vote on September 25, and vote for me.”
Berlusconi resigned as prime minister in 2011 amid revelations about his parties where young, semi-naked TV stars pole-danced for his pleasure.
He is still on trial for bribing his guests to lie in court about the parties he described as “elegant soirées”.
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In 2013 he was found guilty of paying one of his guests, the underage dancer Karima el-Mahroug, known as Ruby the Heart-Stealer, for sex, but was acquitted on appeal on the grounds he did not know she was 17.
Now that a temporary ban on entering politics following a tax fraud conviction has been lifted, Berlusconi is campaigning for a seat in the senate in an electoral alliance with the favourite Giorgia Meloni.
The media mogul and former cruise ship singer began his first TikTok video on September 1 by stating: “Hi kids, here I am.” Subsequent posts included a joke about President Biden, President Putin, the Pope and Berlusconi being stuck on a crashing plane without enough parachutes.
He has proudly boasted of getting 9.2 million hits for his first video, but one young Italian social media influencer claimed politicians on TikTok were being mocked.
“Do you think people ‘like’ you because they back you? No, it’s because we are taking the piss out of you,” said Emma Galeotti, 19.
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“Politicians: you should disappear from this platform. You already have Instagram and Facebook, but this is nothing to do with you, here you just look stupid,” added Galeotti, who has 700,000 followers on TikTok. “We are not so stupid that one video will make us vote for you because that is the only thing we know.”
