ROME
\nMilan airport is to be named after Italy\u2019s scandal-dogged tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, a former three-time prime minister, despite protests Tuesday from the Italian city\u2019s center-left mayor.
\nDeputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who is also transport minister and head of the far-right League party, announced the name change Friday, just over a year after Berlusconi\u2019s death.
\n\u201cThe final decision rests with the Minister of Transport and I am ready to sign it, with pride and emotion, in memory of my friend Silvio, great entrepreneur, great Milanese, and great Italian,\u201d Salvini said.
\nMilan\u2019s mayor Giuseppe Sala said Tuesday the decision to change the name of Malpensa, one of the biggest airports in Italy, should not have been Salvini\u2019s alone.
\n\u201cCan a decision of this kind be made in 24 hours?\u201d he was quoted by the AGI Italian news agency as saying.
\nBillionaire Berlusconi, who died in June last year aged 86, had strong ties to Milan but was a highly divisive figure.
\nWhile some Italians saw him as a charming, self-made man, others slammed him as an international embarrassment, particularly due to his many legal woes and sexual scandals.
\nThe former cruise ship singer was born in the northern Italian city and built his immense fortune there.
\nFor over 30 years he chaired AC Milan, which won the Champions League five times on his watch.
\nBut he was also dogged by accusations he paid young starlets for their silence over his notoriously hedonistic soirees, which he always insisted were elegant dinners.
\nBerlusconi was sentenced in 2013 to seven years in jail for paying for sex with a 17-year-old starlet known as \u201cRuby the Heart-Stealer,\u201d though that conviction was later overturned.
\nHis second wife, Veronica Lario, divorced him in 2014, saying at the time that she could no longer tolerate his \u201cconsorting with minors.\u201d
\nThe Milan division of Italy\u2019s main opposition party, the center-left Democratic Party (PD), also assailed what the \u201cinappropriate and wrong choice.\u201d
\n\u201cOur gateway to the world deserves to represent a shared memory and the unifying values of our country,\u201d it said in a statement, saying it was collecting names of \u201cnon-divisive figures\u201d for whom Malpensa could be named.
\nLeft-wing trade union CGIL posted an online petition on Change.org to propose naming the airport instead after Carla Fracci (1936-2021), a renowned Italian ballet dancer from Milan.
\nIt said Fracci \u201ctransmitted elegance, style and bravura throughout the world,\u201d and appealed to authorities to \u201cavoid choices that are sources of deep divisions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ROME Milan airport is to be named after Italy\u2019s scandal-dogged tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, a former three-time prime minister, despite protests Tuesday from the Italian city\u2019s center-left mayor. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who is also transport minister and head of the far-right League party, announced the name change Friday, just over a year after Berlusconi\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417497,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-417336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n