"For us he will always be there," said Marilda Antonello as she held a banner reading "The law is not equal for everyone. Sick justice."
"He is our only leader. He is the only man who can take Italy forward," she said.
The Senate vote on whether to remove Berlusconi from the chamber stems from a 2012 law that bans anyone sentenced to more than two years in prison from holding or running for public office for six years. His lawyers claim the law is unconstitutional and have questioned why the rush to expel him while legal challenges are still pending.
Italy's high court on August 1 upheld Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction and four-year prison term stemming from his Mediaset empire's purchase of television rights to US films.
The prison term was reduced automatically to one year under a general amnesty; he will serve his time either under house arrest or through public service.
Berlusconi claims he didn't receive a fair trial and that the judges were biased and out to "eliminate" him from public office. His lawyers have also charged that the 2012 law is unconstitutional and can't be applied retroactively to crimes allegedly committed before it was passed.
They have taken their challenge to the European Court of Human Rights — even though it turns out Berlusconi didn't make much of his Senate role to begin with: Private TV La7 reported this week that Berlusconi attended just one Senate session since April's elections. And that was when he did an about-face and backed the government in a confidence vote after threatening to bring it down.
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