Silvio Berlusconi, Ex-Italian Prime Minister and Media Magnate, Dies at 86 His outsize personality, wealth and news platform helped him control the conservative wing, but subsequent legal and sex scandals eroded his standing
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s longest-serving postwar prime minister, a conservative who swept into power on a popular antigraft platform and stayed there for two decades with the help of his big personality, vast wealth and a powerful media empire before falling to a raft of scandals, has died. He was 86.
An extraordinarily divisive figure in Italy and often a target of ridicule abroad for his ribald jokes, sex scandals and overlapping political and business interests, Berlusconi conditioned Italian politics and embodied its conservative movement during and after his tenure as Italy’s leader.
His death was confirmed by an official from his political party. Berlusconi was in the hospital for more than a month in April and May with a chronic form of leukemia. His state funeral in Milan’s cathedral will take place on Wednesday.
Early on in his political career, Berlusconi brought a breath of fresh air to corruption-plagued politics. The persona he cultivated of a self-made man struck a chord with millions of Italians fed up with a political class tainted by corruption, patronage and infighting.
But he later descended into an entrenched war with both Italian magistrates and political opponents that eroded his popular support, paralyzed Italian politics and culminated in his ousting from the Italian Parliament in 2013. He capped a political comeback in 2022 with a return to Parliament as a senator—a position he held at the time of his death—this time as the junior partner in a coalition backing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
On Monday, Meloni said that Berlusconi was one of the most influential people in the history of Italy and “above all else a fighter.”
While Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is a shadow of its former self, it commanded enough votes in last year’s general election to make his support key to Meloni being able to form a majority in Parliament. With Berlusconi no longer there to whip up support for the party that he founded and has embodied for three decades, other parties have already begin positioning to try to pick off Forza Italia voters.
Meloni’s effusive praise for Berlusconi came despite the two disagreeing often over the past several years. Matteo Renzi, a former center-left prime minister who in the past sparred with Berlusconi and has more recently tried to occupy the center of the political spectrum, an area where Berlusconi dabbled in recent years, said on Monday that “Italy is crying” for the passing of Berlusconi.
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