Silvio Berlusconi, 85, celebrates as girlfriend Marta Fascina, 32, wins parliamentary seat

It is a good week for Silvio Berlusconi.

On Sunday he was part of the three-party alliance which won Italy’s general election, was elected to the Senate and he could even reappear in Italy’s cabinet.

On Thursday, he will celebrate his 86th birthday.

And, as good things are supposed to come in threes, it turns out his 32-year-old girlfriend, Marta Fascina, also has something to celebrate – she won a seat in the Italian parliament during this weekend’s elections, despite not showing up in the constituency during the campaign.

Ms Fascina, 32, won the vote in the Sicilian town of Marsala, a town she said she used to visit on holiday as a child. That might not seem enough to convince some constituents, but she secured more than 36 per cent of the vote to allow her sit in the Chamber of Deputies, Italy’s lower house of parliament.

She represents, not surprisingly, her OAP boyfriend’s Forza Italia party and said in an interview that she “accepted with pride” the opportunity to run in Sicily.

Despite being 54 years younger than Berlusconi, she has been his partner since 2020. She was born just four years before the first of his three stints as Italian prime minister.

It should be a story to warm the heart, but some in Sicily were left unimpressed by the election result.

“She ran for Sicily because she came here on vacation. Is this normal?” asked her defeated rival Antonio Ferrante from the Democratic Party.

Despite cynicism, she appears to share her party leader’s views on halting the conflict in Ukraine, telling Italian news outlet Libero that peace was attainable if “Putin and Zelensky ... sit at a table together with mediators such as Italy”.

“To avert a humanitarian, economic and geopolitical catastrophe, diplomacy must absolutely prevail,” she said.

Last week, Berlusconi was criticised for saying that long-time friend Vladimir Putin was pushed into war.

Berlusconi was re-elected to Italy's upper house on Sunday with more than 50 per cent of the votes in the northern city of Monza.

While overall his party lost ground compared with the 2018 general elections, it fared better than expected and Mr Berlusconi's victory was particularly heartfelt.

“Regaining a seat in the senate was a sort of personal revenge for Berlusconi, after all the judicial problems he went through,” said Massimiliano Panarari, political analyst at Rome's Mercatorum University.

In 2013, the senate expelled him because of a tax fraud conviction stemming from his media business, and he was banned from holding public office for six years.

After he served a sentence of community service, a court ruled he could once again hold public office and he won a seat in the European Parliament in 2019.

His third and last premiership ended abruptly in 2011, when financial markets lost confidence that the billionaire media magnate could manage Italy's finances during Europe's sovereign debt crisis.