Who is silvio berlusconi wide angle

In January, a no-confidence vote forces Romano Prodi's government to resign, and in a general election in April, Mr Berlusconi wins a third term in office. With the support of the populist Northern League, the PDL enjoys solid majorities in both houses of parliament.

A controversial law is passed granting the prime minister, president and two parliamentary speakers immunity from prosecution while in office - triggering the suspension of two court cases against Mr Berlusconi.

Narrowly loses general election, coming second to his old rival Romano Prodi. The government coalition collapses after suffering a crushing defeat in regional polls; Mr Berlusconi resigns. Days later, he forms a new government after receiving a presidential mandate. After a four-year trial Prime Minister Berlusconi is cleared of corruption.

Mr Berlusconi returns as prime minister, in coalition once more with his former partners. He remains in the post for the next five years, the head of what becomes the longest-serving Italian government since World War II.

Despite his renewed popularity, allegations of wrongdoing continue to dog him. He is accused of embezzlement, tax fraud and false accounting, and attempting to bribe a judge. A number of cases come to trial. In some cases he is acquitted. In others, he is convicted, but the verdict is overturned on appeal.

In others still, the statute of limitations expires before the case reaches its conclusion. Mr Berlusconi's government passed reforms shortening the statute of limitations for fraud.

There is controversy in as parliament approves a bill enabling Mr Berlusconi to keep control of his businesses. Mr Berlusconi asserts that he is the victim of a conspiracy by a politically motivated judiciary. He loses an election to the left-wing Romano Prodi. But, as ever, Mr Berlusconi refuses to be deterred and spends the next few years reorganising his party. Mr Berlusconi is elected as MP and appointed prime minister in snap elections only a few months after founding his own political party, Forza Italia - Go Italy - named after a chant used by AC Milan fans.

He is in coalition with the right-wing National Alliance and Northern League, but rivalries between the three leaders, coupled with Mr Berlusconi's indictment for alleged tax fraud by a Milan court, lead to the collapse of the government just seven months later. Despite gaffes and questions about his probity, Mr Berlusconi's domestic appeal has endured.

January Leftist party members accuse him of "hijacking Parliament" after he gets media laws rewritten so that he can continue to retain all his ownings. As the production concludes, Berlusconi's years-long trial for having bribed two judges is put on hold after he pushes through legislation that grants him immunity for any crimes he committed before or during his public service. After the program, Rubin talks with author and journalist Alexander Stille about the lack of objectivity on Italian TV and how Berlusconi's monopolies translated into votes and power.

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi's days in power have come to an end. Despite repeated gaffes and scandals, he won three elections and set a postwar record for the length of his premiership. Over the past century Italy has had no lack of troublesome leaders. Silvio Berlusconi, who has been the dominant figure in Italian politics for the past 17 years, is the latest on the list.

He has been the object of at least 23 judicial investigations, mostly for corruption. He has been heard speaking on YouTube, giving sex advice to a prostitute, Patrizia Addario, who had a hidden tape recorder under her breakfast napkin after a night of group sex. And his offensive and vulgar off-the-cuff wisecracks at international meetings, such as saying that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's behind is not worth penetrating, do little to endear him at home or abroad.

Conflicts within his fractious cabinet over how to deal with the economic crisis have meanwhile brought his government to a standstill, with the result that for months he has been hounded by the opposition, and even by some of his friends, to resign as premier.

He has infuriated businessmen and industrialists, as well the opposition by steadfastly refusing to go, until now, on grounds that he would be doing a disservice to those who voted for him and for his Freedom Party PdL in national general elections in Despite all this, many Italians still defend and love him with quasi-religious fervour.

He has been Italy's most prominent politician for almost two decades. He is still the single richest man in Italy and, according to Forbes magazine, the th wealthiest in the world in He is still the great communicator - a raunchy Ronald Reagan - whose aura is, to many, intact.

The potency of that aura was perhaps unwittingly revealed by the conservative newspaper editor Vittorio Feltri. Speaking on a national TV talk show on Monday, Feltri decried those asking for Berlusconi to step aside. To his admirers, then, Berlusconi is not simply one more of the Italy revolving-door premiers who have characterised postwar Italy.

He is royalty. How did this come about, and what was his secret? How did a man who wears high heels to appear taller, who has visible hair transplants and makes no secret of his many facelifts, hoist himself high enough to become at one and the same time Italy's richest and most powerful individual - without becoming a dictator, without recourse to brutality or secret police tactics?

The answer is both simple and complex. Berlusconi is an ebullient, canny man with energy to burn, who has gone through life "riding on a smile and a shoeshine", to borrow Willy Loman's famous phrase in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman.

Unlike the tragic travelling salesman Loman, Berlusconi became one of the world's most successful, if not the most successful, super-salesmen of modern times. If so, he had help. Berlusconi, born in , came of business age during a period of rapid economic growth.

Throughout this boom era, moreover, Berlusconi's home base of Milan was Italy's beating financial heart, a place where an ambitious entrepreneur had ample room to manoeuvre. Milan was also politically convenient because its mayor was the brother-in-law of the Socialist Premier Bettino Craxi, whose own political base was Milan. Later Craxi would stand as godfather to one of Berlusconi's five children. Berlusconi also benefited from the radical transformation taking place in politics throughout the West, and not only in Italy.

During the period of consolidation of Berlusconi's wealth in the s and his subsequent entry into the national political arena in the early s, the nature of politics changed, becoming less ideological.

Berlusconi's regular message was that he, like the defunct Christian Democratic party, was a dike against Communism, but what mattered more to the public was not only that he had a beautiful wife and, notoriously, other beautiful women as well , but that he owned a soccer team, AC Milan.