All hail Berlusconi, the emperor – but where will his power end?

Prime minister's stranglehold on Italy has made him the most popular leader since Mussolini, raising fears over democracy.

When, earlier this week– in her latest, excruciatingly public quarrel with her husband – Silvio Berlusconi's wife, Veronica Lario, referred to him as an "emperor", she was doing more than just sniping at his conceit. She was echoing what is fast becoming the dominant theme in Italian politics – the rightwing media tycoon's burgeoning power and fears he is drifting into using it in undemocratic ways. Such concerns are scarcely new. But next week, when the 72-year-old Berlusconi marks the first anniversary of his return to office, he will be celebrating an accumulation of influence and popularity no other leader of Italy has enjoyed since the fall of its fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. Few would quibble with the judgment of Massimo Giannini, the author of a recently published book on Berlusconi that, in the last 12 months, Berlusconi has "definitively recaptured Italy". Italy's ebullient, perma-tanned prime minister has an outright majority in parliament and a unified party behind him. His poll ratings are enough to bring tears of frustration to the eyes of other recession-battered leaders. And his grip on the Italian media is stronger than ever. Of the seven main national television channels, three are answerable to him as the principal shareholder and another three, run by Italy's public broadcasting service, RAI, are indirectly answerable to him as prime minister. In the latest Freedom House report on the ­international media, Italy was downgraded from "free" to "partly free", putting it on a par with countries such as Albania and Ukraine.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/01/italy-silvio-berlusconi