Berlusconi Keen to Found Party With Ex-beauty Queen, Says Media

Silvio Berlusconi is reportedly planning to found a new political movement with which to wrest back power in Italy. And speculation about his strategy has focused attention on the opposition leader's increasingly close political links with a successful businesswoman and former Miss Italy contestant, tipped to be the new party's general secretary.

Michela Brambilla, known as La Rossa because of her red hair, has built up a network of some 15,000 grassroots political clubs known as the Freedom Circles.

Several Italian dailies yesterday reported the TV magnate had arranged with a notary public to register the name and logos of an as yet non-existent Freedom party. Such a branding exercise would be in line with the approach to politics of a leader who started his business career as a salesman and created Forza Italia! from nothing by exploiting the regional network of his advertising firm, Publitalia.

However, what role the putative Freedom party would play, and what relationship it would have with the Freedom Circles, remains unclear. On Sunday, the newspaper La Stampa said Mr Berlusconi conceived it as a response to the center-left's efforts to build a dominant party, taking in both former Communists and progressive former Christian Democrats. The new center-left Democratic party is to be launched in October.

But Mr Berlusconi's long-held aim of forging a single right-wing party were again rejected this week by his closest ally, Umberto Bossi, of the Northern League.

Other speculation has pointed to the new Freedom party as a complement to - or replacement for - Forza Italia!

The membership of Ms Brambilla's Freedom Circles extends well beyond Mr Berlusconi's existing party. In particular, it has attracted younger voters, disillusioned with conventional politics, whose support could determine the outcome of Italy's next general election.

Those close to the opposition leader, who lost power last year, say he is convinced a new vote will have to be held in early 2008. And the current rules give a big advantage to the more united coalition.

A former head of the Italian young retailers' association, 39-year-old Ms Brambilla endeared herself to Mr Berlusconi with her entrepreneurial outlook and straight talking. She is also famed for sleeping only two hours a night.

Mr Berlusconi has called her a "wonderful person" and hinted that she could be his political successor.