Few politicians had the varied experience and survival instinct of the late Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. He dominated the public narrative for more than 30 years, winning three general elections and changing the course of Italian politics after the notorious mani pulite scandal of the 1990s.

Berlusconi accelerated the collapse of the country’s major political parties and the polarised electoral divide between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party and its left-wing allies.

For decades many Italians identified themselves as pro- or anti-Berlusconis. With the death of the founder of the centre-right Forza Italia, the Italian daily La Repubblica argues that Italian politics may be entering ‘a new era’ of more political polarisation.

Before entering politics, Berlusconi was already a prosperous entrepreneur. He was a successful real-estate developer and later a media revolutionary, setting up the private broadcaster Mediaset empire. He challenged state-owned RAI’s broadcasting dominance and introduced commercial television in Italy.

Despite his lack of experience, Berlusconi rose to the top of Italian politics partly due to his success as an entrepreneur, a quality many Italians admire. He was elected prime minister in 1994 and again in 2001 and 2008, only to be forced to resign following an acute debt crisis.

By then, European allies had already started keeping their distance, and this not just because of his regular faux pas on the international stage. When he resigned, Italy’s was facing financial woes, and prosecutors were on his heels especially because of his “bunga bunga” scandal. During his career, he faced 36 trials, with serious charges like mafia affiliation, bribery, and underage prostitution. Still, his only definitive conviction came for tax fraud in 2013. He was expelled from parliament and lost the prestigious title of Cavaliere del Lavoro. Like many disgraced politicians, Berlusconi blamed a conspiracy of “communists” and a frame-up plot for his conviction.

Few would have guessed at the time how much future politics would follow Berlusconi’s populist template.

Perhaps the most remarkable attribute of Berlusconi, the longest-serving Italian prime minister, is his undeniable communication skills. He transformed business and political communication. He endeared himself with the Italian public to the extent that some analysts describe him as Europe’s first populist leader. And he did this by tapping into voters’ disillusionment about the status quo.

Unfortunately, his style, knowingly or unknowingly, popularised the far-right and paved the way for populist leaders like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Marine Le Pen.

In the last few years, Berlusconi projected himself as the kingmaker of Italian politics despite being progressively marginalised and isolated in Italian politics. His Forza Italia lost the dominance of the country’s right-wing coalition. Berlusconi’s leadership was eclipsed first by the National League’s Matteo Salvini and then by the Brothers of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni.

While many leaders are paying tribute to Berlusconi, we need to be careful not to let his indisputable charm overshadow his many alleged crimes and blunders.

While some continue turning a blind eye to his sexist and racial remarks, we should not forget how controversy courted him until the end – only last year he tried to justify his friend Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

In the last five decades, the lavish, flamboyant, and controversial Berlusconi was a bigger-than-life protagonist of Italian politics, business, and sports. But in reality, while campaigning for political reform, he did not leave a legacy of effective legislation.

The jury is still out on whether Berlusconi was indeed a reformer.