Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi yet again has appealed to his fellow Italians. He sees himself as a victim of the courts and lawyers and has vowed to fight on against what he views as a defamation campaign.

It should all be rather simple. According to Italian law, a parliamentarian convicted with a sentence of more than two years has to resign from his political office. Silvio Berlusconi has been sentenced to four years in prison. And yet he's still sitting in the Senate. The vote on whether he'll be forced out has been postponed several times and it's still not clear whether, or when, he'd have to go.

As usual when things get tight, Berlusconi plays for time - time, perhaps, to buy the necessary votes, or set up a backroom deal? It's a legitimate suspicion, as there have been plenty of rumors in the past over such illegal, yet rather effective, ways to win the favor of other delegates.

In 2006, Berlusconi allegedly got then-Prime Minister Romani Prodi ousted by paying three million euros to Senator Sergio De Gregorio and his foundation to convince him and a few fellow delegates to switch sides in parliament.

There's a court case under way in Naples and De Gregorio personally accuses Berlusconi of having bribed him. It's only one of several trials currently under way against Berlusconi.

A victim of the judiciary

Silvio Berlusconi is portraying himself as the favorite victim of the Italian judiciary. He talks about a plot to eliminate him through the courts, because politically simply no-one is a match for him.

In a 16-minute video message addressed to the Italian people, which Berlusconi recorded from the desk in his villa, the former prime minister accused judges and prosecutors of seeking to destroy him, his family, friends and employees by fabricating accusations without having a single shred of evidence.

Also in the video, he claimed to have gone through some 50 trials without ever having been convicted. According to Massimo Gianni of left-leaning daily La Repubblica, this is a lie. "Six lies in 16 minutes," says Gianni.

Unintentionally funny

The video comes across as somewhat unintentionally funny. Berlusconi gets himself worked up and by the time he theatrically calls on every Italian who loves their country to rebel, the speech turns from self defense into campaigning.

Just like 20 years ago he promotes Forza Italia as the party of the honest and hard working citizen trying to resist the pressure from a tax-greedy government. It's a surreal video that immediately has attracted a wide following on social media and the online websites of Italian media. A mix of ridicule and irony with hundreds of answers - some of a more and some off a less serious nature.

Letta's government at stake

Berlusconi did not bring up the current government under Enrico Letta, but the cabinet of Letta's Democratic Party is nonetheless concerned over the stability of the current coalition. The ministers fielded by Berlusconi have repeatedly threatened to quit their posts should their boss get thrown out of the Senate.

Berlusconi's PDL party has become tied together by a sense of solidarity, seeing the party's fate as dependant on Berlusconi. Should he fall, the entire party would collapse like a house of cards. The PDL members appear like foot soldiers of a ruler who doesn't accept dissenting voices. Not wanting to saw the branch they're sitting on, they repeat what Berlusconi tells them.

Still a future in politics?

The decision to make Berlusconi leave the Senate will come, the clock is ticking. But although it will be difficult, the 76-year old does not plan to give up his political ambitions. Quite the contrary: He just opened the new party headquarters of Forza Italia and has announced that he will continue in politics even if he loses his seat in parliament. The top candidate for the next election could in fact be his eldest daughter Marina, who's already part of her father's business and media empire.

The main candidates in Sunday's German election have made final appeals to undecided voters. Chancellor Angela Merkel lobbied in Berlin while Social Democrat rival Peer Steinbrück campaigned in Frankfurt.

election outcome remained unpredictable on election eve Saturday, with polls showing Merkel's coalition allies the pro-business Free Democrats hovering at the 5 percent threshold for parliamentary representation.

Speculation continued that Merkel's conservatives could end up forming a grand coalition with the center-left opposition Social Democrats (SPD) headed by Steinbrück, who himself favors the Greens. Pre-election surveys put Merkel's conservatives 13 percent ahead of the SPD.

Merkel defends EU

Merkel on Saturday addressed 4,000 of her conservative supporters in Berlin, telling them she needed a "strong mandate," before heading to the Baltic Sea port city of Stralsund to appeal to voters in her home electorate.

Before departing Berlin, she said she wanted to continue leading Europe's biggest economy as "your chancellor for another four years." She spent half of her speech defending the European Union.

"In the coming years we must keeping working for the success of this wonderful continent," she said to loud applause.

She also acknowledged that "lots of people won't make up their mind until the last minute."

"Yes, it will be close," Merkel later told a crowd of 2,000 in Stralsund, referring to the race for the 598-seat federal parliament, the Bundestag.

Steinbrück highlights social imbalance

Visiting Frankfurt on his final campaign day, Steinbrück answered voters' questions on his calls for a standard minimum wage and his accusations that under Merkel Germany has witnessed a worsening gap between rich and poor.

He echoed Merkel in defending the euro against euroskeptics, but slammed Merkel's governance of the past four years.

"You can get rid of the most backward-looking, least capable, most loud-mouthed German government since reunification," Steinbrück said.

Between 2005 and 2009, Steinbrück served as SPD finance minister in a Merkel-led grand coalition. Welfare and labor market changes cost the SPD millions of voters in 2009, when Merkel won and sided with the FDP.

He spoke as electioneering also continued in Germany's commercial center for a parallel election on Sunday to pick the next assembly of the surrounding regional state Hesse. Its assembly is located in Wiesbaden.

Poll 'not decided,' say Greens

Greens' leading candidate, Katrin Göring Eckardt told a rally in Berlin late Friday that despite declining survey results Sunday's election outcome was "still absolutely not decided."

Her co-lead-candidate Jürgen Trittin said the Greens were aiming for a better result than the 10.7 percent garnered in Germany's 2009 federal election.

Unknowns remain

Berlin Free University political scientist Gero Neugebauer said doubts remained about a continuation of Merkel's existing coalition, comprising her Christian Democrats (CDU), Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and the liberal FDP.

Two new surveys published Friday placed Merkel's existing coalition in a dead heat at 45 to 45 percent, facing - mathematically at least - a center-left array of SPD, Greens and the Left. Pre-election surveys have, however, also shown up to a third of voters undecided.

On their own, Merkel's CDU and Bavarian CSU allies could amass 40 percent, according to surveys. The opposition SPD is on about 26 percent and its preferred partner the Greens on nine percent. The Left is also put at 9 percent.

The FDP, stung by 3.3 percent and its regional assembly exit in Bavaria's state election last weekend, has spend the final week urging voters nationwide to "split their ballot by casting constituency vote for Merkel but donate their second or party "list-vote" to keep the liberals in the federal parliament.

Merkel and other senior conservatives have dismissed the liberal's tactical move, urging instead that conservatives vote for Merkel and her CDU/CSU alliance.

Bavaria's Seehofer slams FDP campaign

Bavarian leader Horst Seehofer, whose CSU savored 47.7 in last Sunday's southern election, demanded on Saturday that the FDP drop its second "list-vote" campaign.

Undeterred, Foreign Minister and former FDP leader Guido Westerwelle lobbied conservatives to donate their second votes during a FDP rally in Düsseldorf

Lying in surveys under the 5-percent hurdle are the once-prominent Internet-savvy Pirates and the new euroskeptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) on 4 percent.

Sunday's election involves 61.8 million registered voters holding German nationality and a total of 34 parties. Among them are 3 million first-time voters who have turned 18 since the last general election in 2009.

ipj/rc (AFP, dpa, Reuters)