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Salvatore "Totò" Cuffaro.

Salvatore "Totò" Cuffaro (born February 21, 1958 in Raffadali, Agrigento) is an Italian politician, and the current President of Sicily.

A graduate in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Palermo, with a specialization in radiology, Cuffaro joined the Christian Democrat 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 Regional Sicilian Assembly in 1996; in the next legislature he then served as Regional Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries.

In 2001, after having joined the Democrats' Centre Union, Cuffaro was endorsed by the House of Freedoms as presidential candidate for Sicily. He won the election, with 59.1% of the vote.

In June 26, 2003, it was revealed that Cuffaro was being investigated for Mafia-related crimes, and 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.

In the Italian general election, 2006, 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.

He was recently the object of media attention thanks to the film La Mafia è Bianca by Stefano Maria Bianchi and Alberto Nerazzini, which exposes rife corruption in the Sicilian Health service and shows a clip of police film footage of Cuffaro meeting with a known mafioso. Cuffaro took the publishers to court for defamation but lost the first round of the case.

• Official website (Italian)

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