Il Cavaliere

Il Cavaliere

Silvio Berlusconi (; born 29 September 1936) is an Italian politician and media tycoon who served three times as Prime Minister of Italy from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011, led the country almost ten years and seven years as leader of opposition. Berlusconi is also the controlling shareholder of Mediaset and owner of the Italian football club, A.C. Milan. He is nicknamed Il Cavaliere (The Knight) for his Order of Merit for Labour. Berlusconi is the longest-serving post-war Prime Minister of Italy, and third longest-serving since the Unification of Italy, after Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti, holding three separate terms. Technically, he has been sworn in four times because after a cabinet reshuffle, as happened with Berlusconi in 2005, the new ministry is sworn in and subjected to a vote of confidence. He is the leader of the People of Freedom, a centre-right party he founded in 2009 as a successor to the Forza Italia party he previously led since 1993. From November 2009 to November 2011, he was the most senior leader of the G8 countries. In 2012, Forbes magazine ranked him as the 169th richest man in the world with a net worth of US$5.9 billion.

Berlusconi rapidly rose to the forefront of Italian politics in 1994. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time and appointed as Prime Minister following the 1994 parliamentary elections, when Forza Italia gained a relative majority a mere three months after having been launched. However, his cabinet collapsed after nine months, due to internal disagreements among the coalition parties. In the April 1996 snap parliamentary elections, Berlusconi was defeated by the centre-left candidate Romano Prodi. In the May 2001 parliamentary elections, he was again the centre-right candidate for Prime Minister and won against the centre-left candidate Francesco Rutelli. Berlusconi then formed his second and third cabinets, until 2006. Berlusconi was leader of the centre-right coalition in the April 2006 parliamentary elections, which he lost by a very narrow margin, his opponent again being Romano Prodi. He was re-elected in the parliamentary elections of April 2008 following the collapse of Prodi's government and sworn in for a third time as Prime Minister on 8 May 2008.

After losing his majority in parliament amid growing fiscal problems related to the European debt crisis, Berlusconi resigned as Prime Minister on 16 November 2011. He is currently leading the People of Freedom and its right wing allies in the campaign for the February 2013 parliamentary elections. Although he initially planned to run for a fifth term as Prime Minister, as part of the agrement with the Lega Nord he would instead plan to lead the coalition without becoming Prime Minister.

Berlusconi has been involved in a number of controversies and over 20 court cases during his political career, including a conviction for tax evasion in October 2012, though he was not jailed. He was criticised for his electoral coalitions with right wing populist parties (the Lega Nord and the neo-fascist National Alliance) and for apologetic remarks about Mussolini, though he also officially apologised for Italy's actions in Libya during colonial rule. While in power, Berlusconi maintained ownerhsip of Mediaset, the largest media company in Italy, and was criticised for his dominance of the Italian media. His leadership was also undermined by sex scandals.