Salvatore Cuffaro

Salvatore "Totò" Cuffaro (born 21 February 1958) is a former Italian politician and former President of Sicily. He has served an almost 5-year jail sentence for aiding Cosa Nostra. He has earned the nickname Vasa Vasa (Sicilian for "Kiss Kiss") for his tendency to kiss everybody; he says that he has kissed a quarter of all the people on the island.

A graduate of medicine and surgery at the University of Palermo, with a specialization in radiology, Cuffaro was expelled from the medical order for indignity. He joined the Christian Democrat (DC) party during his student days. Then, after having served as City Councillor in his native city, Raffadali, and Palermo, Cuffaro was first elected Member of the Sicilian Regional Assembly in 1991. In 1996, he served as Regional Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries.

His political career began under the wing of former minister Calogero Mannino, who in the past was suspected of having ties with the Mafia. Following the demise of the DC, he became a member of ex-DC splinter parties before joining the party Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC). He first became known nationally in September 1991, when he defended his political patron Mannino, accused of being a witness at a Mafia wedding, live on television in a joint broadcasting of the Maurizio Costanzo show and Michele Santoro's Samarcanda, accusing the presenters that their journalism was Mafia journalism. Later, Mannino was absolved. For many years it was falsely told that: "In the presence of Antimafia judge Giovanni Falcone he (Cuffaro) accused the Sicilian prosecutors of manipulating state witnesses (pentiti). In October 2009, Cuffaro denounced for "defamation and threats" the 5000 and above YouTube users who commented on the video of the TV show. But, with judgment number 1742 of 2013, the Civil Court of Palermo ordered compensation in favour of Cuffaro by Antonio Di Pietro, who had linked on its website the video of Cuffaro in Samarcanda under the title "Costanzo show: Totò Cuffaro attacks Giovanni Falcone. "In its judgment the Court found that "there is no evidence of a direct attack from Cuffaro against Prosecutor Falcone," and that Cuffaro himself, if anything, had criticized an investigation that was declared unfounded a few days later. In any case, the prosecutor criticized by Cuffaro was another one, not Falcone.

In 2001, after having joined the UDC, Cuffaro was endorsed by the House of Freedoms as presidential candidate for Sicily. He won the election, with 59.1% of the vote, defeating Leoluca Orlando. Cuffaro was elected as part of Silvio Berlusconi's sensational clean sweep of the island when his coalition won all 61 of its parliamentary seats.

On 26 June 2003, it was revealed that Cuffaro was being investigated for Mafia-related crimes, after Domenico Miceli, a fellow UDC politician, was arrested for allegedly acting as a link between a Mafia chief and top Sicilian politicians, including Cuffaro. A few months later he was committed for trial. Despite all this, Cuffaro stood for the 2004 European Parliament election. Later that year, Cuffaro was appointed national vice-secretary of UDC, the party headed by Pier Ferdinando Casini. Until 2008 he was also President of COPPEM.

In the 2006 Italian general election, he was elected senator for his party, UDC. In the 2006 regional election, he was successively re-elected President of Sicily with 53.1% of the vote, defeating Rita Borsellino, the Union candidate and sister of the late judge Paolo Borsellino, killed by the mafia in 1992.

Cuffaro and the Italian Minister of Justice, Clemente Mastella were involved in a scandal when it was found that they had been best men of Francesco Campanella, a former member of the Mafia and town councillor of Villabate, who helped the boss Bernardo Provenzano during his absconding. In 2001 Campanella used his official position to supply Cosa Nostra's top "godfather" with an identity card so he could travel abroad for medical treatment. In July 2000 Mastella and Cuffaro had been witnesses at Campanella's wedding.

In the year 2005, he was the object of media attention thanks to the television reportage La Mafia è Bianca (The Mafia is White) by investigative journalists Stefano Maria Bianchi and Alberto Nerazzini, which aimed to expose rife corruption in the Sicilian Health service and shows a clip of police film footage of Cuffaro meeting with a known mafioso. Cuffaro tried unsuccessfully to prevent the publishers from broadcasting their reportage on the grounds of its allegedly "defamatory" contents but in January 2006 the Civil Court in Bergamo rejected his request, stating that both text and video, including the audio commentary by the journalists, were not defamatory. Following later investigations and trial Cuffaro has been jailed for seven years after losing a final appeal against a mafia conviction and being banned for life from holding public office.