Gianfranco Fini (born
January 3, 1952) is an Italian
politician, currently President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and
member of the centre-right party
People of Freedom. He was
also
Deputy Prime Minister and
Minister of Foreign
Affairs in Berlusconi’s government of 2001 to 2006.
Biography
Family origins
His grandfather, a
communist activist,
died in 1970.
His father, Argenio "Sergio" Fini (Bologna
1923 - Rome
1998), was a volunteer with the Italian Social Republic (the nazi
puppet state in Northern Italy in 1943-45); he later declared
feeling close to the Italian Socialist Democratic
Party, but he withdrew from political activity after his son
became involved in the Movimento Sociale
Italiano.
His
mother, Erminia Marani (Ferrara
1926 - Rome 2008), was the daughter of Antonio Marani, who took
part along with Italo Balbo in the
march on Rome, which signaled the
beginning of fascism in 1922. The
name Gianfranco was chosen in remembrance of a cousin, who was
killed when he was 20 years old by partisans soon after the
liberation of Northern Italy on April 25th, 1945.
Personal events
In the 1980s he met Daniela Di Sotto, at that time married to
Sergio Mariani, a friend and party officer. Mrs. Di Sotto ended her
marriage to stay with Fini. Mariani would try to kill himself soon
after. In
1985 they had their only daughter,
Giuliana. Fini and Di Sotto married in a civil ceremony in
Marino in 1988. They separated in 2007.
Five months after his separation, his relationship with Elisabetta
Tulliani, a lawyer who was twenty years younger than he, was
revealed. In December 2007, they had a daughter, Carolina..
Political life
From the beginning to the role of Deputy of Giorgio
Almirante
Gianfranco Fini attended "Laura Bassi" high school in Bologna. His
first known involvement with politics occurred in
1968 when, the 16-year-old Fini was involved in clashes
with communist activists, among them a protest in front of a cinema
against the projection of
John Wayne's
The Green Berets movie. At this
time, he became involved with the
Italian Social Movement (MSI), a
neo-fascist political party.
He then began his political career in the
Fronte della
Gioventù (Youth Front),
MSI youth organization.
Three
years later, he moved with his family to Rome.
In August
1976 he served his military service in Savona
, then in
Rome at the Ministry of
Defence. In 1977 he became national secretary of the
Fronte della Gioventù, chosen by
Giorgio Almirante,
MSI secretary, notwithstanding his
fifth place on seven candidates elected in the national secretariat
of the youth movement.
In the
meantime, Fini had also graduated with a degree in pedagogy from La Sapienza
University in Rome. He alsocollaborated with
the party's newspaper,
Secolo
d'Italia, along with the youth movement magazine
Dissenso.
Fini was first elected to the
Chamber of Deputies on June 26th, 1983,
as a member of the MSI. Re-elected in
1987, in
September he was nominated by Almirante to be his successor as the
party's secretary.
In 2009 it emerged that as already in
1980
Almirante had identified Fini as one among a group of young
Italians who were «young, non-fascist, non-nostalgic, who believe,
as I do by now, in these institutions, in this
Constitution. Because only in this way
the
MSI can have a
future».
From the Italian Social Movement to National Alliance
Giorgio Almirante died in May of 1988, and
in the party's congress in Sorrento
that year,
Fini defeated the right wing of the party, headed by Pino Rauti, and is elected party
secretary. He remained in the national secretariat of
the MSI until January 1990, when in the next party congress in
Rimini
, Pino Rauti was elected
secretary. But after a tough electoral defeat in
administrative and regional elections in
Sicily Fini returned to his role as party secretary
in July
1991. He held this post until the
dissolution of party in
1995.
During his time as national secretary, he confirmed the MSI’s role
as the inheritors of
Mussolini’s
Fascist legacy with a number of famous polemical
statements, including: "Dear comrades,
MSI
claims its right to refer to
fascism"
(1988), "We are fascists, the heirs of fascism, the fascism of the
year 2000" (1991), "After almost half a century, fascism is ideally
alive" (1992), "There are phases where
freedom is not among the key values"
(1994), "
Mussolini was the
greatest Italian statesman of the twentieth century" , "
Fascism has a tradition of honesty, correctness and
good government" (1994).
Im the
autumn of 1993, Fini ran for mayor of Rome, garnering
enough votes to participate in a runoff election that resulted in
the victory of Francesco
Rutelli. Nevertheless, for the first time an MSI
candidate received a large support in a major election.
Silvio Berlusconi, then an entrepreneur
but not involved in politics, affirmed on that occasion his
preference for Fini: "If I had to vote in Rome, my preference would
go to Fini.
After
Berlusconi's election in
1994, for the first time in Italy's politics, an
Italian government include four ministers from the MSI party,
including the Deputy Prime Minister
Giuseppe Tatarella, although Fini did not
directly take part as a minister. (Fini was not a minister at that
time.)
Towards the end of the 1990s Fini gradually began to move the MSI
away from its
neo-fascist ideology to a more
traditionally
conservative political
agenda.
In January 1995, the Party's congress in
Fiuggi
marked a radical change, afterwards referred to as
la svolta di Fiuggi (the turning point at Fiuggi) and
merged the MSI-DN with conservative elements
of the disbanded Christian
Democrats to form the National Alliance (AN), of which
Fini assumed the presidency.
The new party took a decisive stance apart from fascism, and some
MSI members (
Pino Rauti, Erra, Staiti)
dissented and seceded to form the new
Tricolor Flame party.
Government experiences
Fini and his party have been part of Berlusconi's right-wing
House of Freedoms coalition which
won the
1994 and
2001 parliamentary
election. Fini became
deputy
prime minister in
2001 and
foreign minister in November
2004.
From February 2002 to 2006, he represented the Italian Government
at the
European Convention.
Following the
April 2008
general election, Fini was elected
President of the Chamber of
Deputies on April 30, 2008 on the fourth ballot, receiving 355
votes.
His most widely known legislative acts have been:
- The Bossi-Fini Act, a
restrictive legislation on immigration;
- The Fini-Giovanardi Act (2006), a restrictive
legislation on drugs. The act abolish any
distinction between sotf drugs (cannabis)
and hard drugs (heroine, cocaine), punishing the user on the base of the
quantity of active ingredient in
the dose. As administrative sanctions, personal use of drugs is
punished with a fee and the suspension of passport, driving license
and/or weapon carring permit. The cultivation of a single plant is
punished with 1 up to 6 years of imprisonment
From National Alliance to The People of Freedom
After some disband between the party's factions in 2005, a congress
dismantled the factions and confirmed Fini as president of the
party.
In
2006, Fini announced the removal of the
symbol of the flame and of the "M.S.I." writing from
AN symbol. The move, after finding
opposition from party members such as
Maurizio Gasparri was finally
denied.
Fini began a personal evolution towards more liberal stances in the
2000s, notwithstanding the opposition of the rest of his party. In
particular:
- in 2005 he announced a positive vote (three
yes, one no) on a referendum on artificial insemination aimed at
removing some limits introduced by the Act n.40/2004 of the same
Berlusconi III Cabinet.
- in December 2006 he declared he would be in favour of public
acknowledgement of civil unions, including homosexual ones,
although in opposition anyway to the centre-left government
proposed bill on the theme.
At the end of January
2007,
Berlusconi declared Fini would be his only
successor in case of unification of centre-right parties, finding
dissent from the
Northern League and
the
UDC.
In
2008 Berlusconi
proclaimed the dissolution of his
Forza
Italia party and the birth of a new unitary party of the
centre-right,
the People of
Freedoms. At first, Fini reacted coldly, affirming that
AN would not participate,
judging confused and superficial the way the new party was born,
and expressing an open dissent against his ally of the "former
coalition".
Anyway, two months later, he gets close to
Berlusconi again, soon after the fall of the
Prodi II Cabinet. They agree to
present the two party under the same symbol of
the People of Freedoms in the
April 2008 parliamentary
election, to proceed then towards a unitary centre-right
party.
Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies
After the eletoral victory, on 30 April 2008 Fini is elected
President (speaker) of the Chamber of Deputies, with 335 votes on
611, on the fourth roll call. He then announce to leave the
presidency of
AN, while
waiting for the unification in
the People of Freedoms.
Commenting the hommage of the President of the Republic to every
victim of terrorism, the former
PCI Giorgio Napolitano, he announced the «the
end of post-war period», of « the cleavage between the right and
the society», and the «overcoming of the condition of
minority»
Going on in his path of revision of the values of the Italian
right, at the 2008 youth fest
Atreju 2008 he asserted that
the Right has to acknowledge those rights «present in the
Constitution: freedom, equality and social justice. Values that led
and still lead the the path of the Right, that are values of any
democracy and that are fully anti-fascist».
In his role of Speaker of the Chamber, he rebuked more than once
the government over the use of
confidence votes, criticizing theirs
estensive use.
He fought against the bad costumes of absenteeism and double-voting
of MPs in the Italian Parliament, promoting a digital voting system
(to be implemented from March 2009) to impede MPs from voting for
absent members, judging it "immoral" 19 MPs over 630 refused,
however, to allow their
fingerprints to be recorded, and the
system was implemented on a voluntary base.
He also negatively judged the will of the
Berlusconi government to intervene with a decree
on the case of
Eluana Englaro and
supported the need to defend the
secularism of the State, being then criticized
from members of
UDC and of his same
party.
Controversies
The most usual criticism to Fini from the Right side are linked
with the move from the traditional stances of the party. Apart of
the "Social Right" area of his tradition rival
Pino Rauti, the right-wing intellectual
Marcello Veneziani accused Fini to have
tied any link with the right-wing thought (whether traditional,
nostalgic, modern or conservative) and to represent by now an
"astral" right, with no similarity to other European rights.
Further criticism came to Fini from the
Northern League with respect to some aspects
of
federalism and
immigration, and from
Forza Italia regarding justice.
Fini was lately accused of being incoherent from some "teo-con"
members, for his position in favor of the natural family while
being separated and never married in Church.
- In 1999 Fini asked for forced hospitalization of drug
consumers, without distinctions between different illegal
drugs.
- On
January 29, 2006, after the approval by the Senate of the
Fini-sponsored drug bill (equiparation of marijuana to class 1 drugs such as heroin or cocaine for dealers
and fines for consumption) Fini, guest on the popular TV-Show
Che tempo che fa, hosted by Fabio
Fazio, admitted to having smoked marijuana while on vacation in Jamaica
.
- In May 2008, he sparked outrage when he said that the burning
of an Israeli flag was much worse than the murder of a 29-year-old
man in Verona, savagely beaten to death by a local group of
skinheads.
- He ignited controversy when he stated that the racial laws were
not the sole responsibility of the Fascist regime, but also that
Italian civil society and the Roman Catholic Church had to have
their share of the blame as well.
- In a press conference to the Foreign Press Association, was
asked about his thought on Benito
Mussolini. A journalist reminded him that 15 years ago he
called the dictator the greatest statesman of the century, and Fini
replied: "I'm fascinated by your question.... clearly the answer is
in what I've done in the past 15 years." Today, Fini added, "my
answer is no, I have changed my mind, otherwise I would be
schizophrenic."
References
- Gianfranco e Daniela Ostilità dei salotti,
«Corriere della Sera», 17 June 2007.
- Interview to Mariani
- Cited by Corrado De Cesare, Il fascista del Duemila. Le
radici del camerata Gianfranco Fini, Kaos Edizioni, 1995, ISBN
8879530461)
- Gianfranco il freddo
- L'Occidentale, 12 May 2008
- Corriere della Sera, 13/09/2008
- Il Cannocchiale, 13/01/2009: L'ira di Fini:
«Una cosa mai vista».
- [1]
- Notizie Yahoo, 22May 2009
- Veneziani: "Fini? La sua è una destra marziana"
Il Giornale - 17 giugno 2009
- "Ricovero coatto per i drogati" - Le dichiarazioni
di Granfranco Fini
- Video
- TIME
- AGI
- AGI
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