La Repubblica yesterday hit back at allegations by the Prime Minister that it “defamed and denigrated” him out of “envy and hate” by publishing a list of ten questions which he had failed to answer in his accounts of the Noemi Letizia affair.

In a signed editorial on the front page Ezio Mauro, the editor of Italy’s leading left-leaning paper, said that it was easy to reply to Mr Berlusconi, adding that it was “much more difficult for the Prime Minister to reply to our questions. In fact for him it is impossible. Berlusconi does not know what to say in reply to public opinion, and he cannot make a reply because of the evidence.” In interviews which amounted to monologues because no one in Italy asked hard questions, Mr Berlusconi had “contradicted everything that has been said by other people involved in the affair”, above all Veronica Lario, his wife, Mr Mauro said. “So it is better for him to stay silent, to refute the truth.”

He said that Mr Berlusconi was “a man on the run” who was using his media outlets to “cover the vacuum”. The Noemi Letizia affair was not a private matter but “a handicap to his leadership” and “a stain on the institution” of the Prime Minister’s office.

No one more than Mr Berlusconi had “confused private and public”, sending a booklet of his personal life story to the homes of 50 million electors when he entered politics. “Today, fifteen years on he continues to sell electoral devotional images of his childhood in glossy picture stories on the pages of his magazines”.

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