National Alliance (Italy)
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| National Alliance Alleanza Nazionale |
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|---|---|
 Italian National Party |
|
| Leader | Gianfranco Fini |
| Founded | December 11, 1993 (as MSI-National Alliance) January 27, 1995 (as National Alliance) |
| Headquarters | Via della Scrofa, 43 00186 Rome |
| Coalition | House of Freedoms |
| Political ideology | National conservatism, Conservatism |
| European affiliation | Alliance for Europe of the Nations |
| International affiliation | none |
| Official newspaper | Il Secolo d'Italia |
| Website | http://www.alleanzanazionale.it |
| See also | Politics of Italy |
National Alliance (Italian: Alleanza Nazionale, often shortened to AN) is a right-wing Italian political party. It was formed by current secretary Gianfranco Fini from the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the ex-neofascist party, which was declared dissolved in January 1995, and conservative elements of the former Christian Democracy, which had disbanded in 1994 after two years of scandals and various splits due to corruption at its highest levels, exposed by the Mani Pulite investigation, and the Italian Liberal Party, disbanded in the same year. Former MSI members were however still the bulk of the new party. Its headquarters are located in Rome.
The logo follows a template very similar to the Democratic Party of the Left, with the previous logo in a small circle (as a means of legally preventing others from using it). The name was suggested by an article on the Italian newspaper Il Tempo written in 1992 by Domenico Fisichella, and echoes the name of the left-wing Democratic Alliance, a contemporary short-lived project of a lay centre-left coalition whose founder was Ferdinando Adornato.
The party has roughly 10-15% support across Italy, having it stongholds in central and southern Italy (Lazio 18.6%, Umbria 15.2%, Marche 14.3%, Abruzzo 14.3%, Puglia 13.2%, Sardinia 12.9%, Tuscany 12.6% and Campania 12.6% in the last general election), scoring badly in Lombardy (10.2%) and competing in the North-East (Friuli-Venezia Giulia 15.5% and Veneto 11.3%) with the Lega Nord, its ally in the centre-right House of Freedoms coalition. The relationship of AN with the Northern League can be tense at times, especially about issues of national unity, but the two parties share views on other issues such as immigration; AN's views are normally slightly more moderate than Lega Nord's.
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[edit] Political program
AN's political program emphasizes:
- Catholicism, close to the official Church position, also due to the participation of the former members of the Christian Democracy;
- law and order, especially laws aimed at controlling immigration and promoting national cohesion, also due to the partitipation of the members of the former MSI.
Distinguishing itself from the MSI, AN has used the expression "post-Fascist" to characterise itself, and proclaims its commitment to constitutionalism, democracy and political pluralism. However, while the uncontested leader Gianfranco Fini has been steering mostly clear of strong association to the Fascist pasts, in opposition to that many high-ranking members (often dubbed colonels), have been caught in statements defending the Italian Fascist regime and in particular the combatants of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, the German puppet state in northern Italy during World War II. Proposals have been laid out by AN to make the status of RSI veterans equal to that of partisans.
Alleanza Nazionale has distanced itself from Benito Mussolini and Fascism and made efforts to improve relations with Jewish groups. With most hardliners leaving the party, it seeks to present itself as a respectable rightwing party.
Nearly two-thirds of the party's supporters approve of the capitalist system and hold favourable views on the privatisation of state industries.
[edit] History
In January 1995, as officially Gianfranco Fini proclaimed MSI's dissolution, and the foundation of the AN, he announced the abandonment MSI's ideological stances, symbols, gestures and salutes that had closely identified it with the Mussolinian past.
Despite Fini's success in distancing the party's image from the former MSI, including the suppression of anti-Jewish comments in public and the party organ "Il Secolo d'Italia", there remain contradictions within the party, mainly in regard to its fascist past.
A rare anti-Semitic manifestation was a March 1999 leaflet produced by the AN's Julius Evola Club in Sestu (Cagliari). The leaflet quoted alleged Talmudic passages as proof that Jews compared gentiles to beasts. In response to protests, the local AN president claimed that the references were intended to be "neither racist, nor anti-democratic nor anti-Jewish".
The AN club in Fiumicino (close to Rome), called for a square to be named after fascist leader Ettore Muti, while the president of the region of Lazio, Francesco Storace, asked that each city dedicate a street to Giorgio Almirante, the predecessor of Fini as the leader of the now-defunct MSI, and a criminal of war during World War II.
When Gianfranco Fini visited Israel in late November 2003 in the function of Italian deputy prime minister, he labeled the racial laws issued by the fascist regime in 1938 as "infamous". He also referred to the RSI as belonging to the most shameful pages of the past, and considered fascism part of an era of "absolute evil".
As a result, Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and some hardliners left the party; she stated that "absolute evil" for her was piazzale Loreto, the square in Milan where her grandfather's remains were shown to the public in the final days of World War II.
[edit] Government participation
The party was part of all three House of Freedoms coalition governments led by Silvio Berlusconi; Gianfranco Fini was notably nominated deputy prime minister in 2001 and became Foreign Minister from November 2004 to May 2006.
[edit] Electoral results
In 1998, it had a membership of 485,657 in 11,539 branches, 89 deputies and 41 senators in the Italian Parliament and nine members of the European Parliament.
The AN suffered a 5 % loss in the 1999 elections to the European Parliament, obtaining only 10.3 % of the vote. It recovered somewhat in the April regional elections, gaining 12.8 % nationwide, and well over 20 % in Rome and Lazio.
In the May 2001 national elections AN obtained 96 seats out of 630 in the Chamber of Deputies and 46 seats out of 324 in the Senate. The party lost a few key seats in the 2003 local elections such as the Province of Rome, but its position remained firm. The party obtained 11.5 % of the vote and 9 seats in the June 2004 European Parliament elections. In the 2005 regional elections AN lost almost all the remaining key seats, such as the Region of Lazio.
In the European Parliament, its MEPs work within the group of the Union for a Europe of Nations.
For the general election of April 9 and 10, 2006, the party presented a new logo, which includes the name of Fini in it. In the Lower chamber, the NA received 4,703,256 votes (12.34%), thus securing 71 seats.
In Senate, where Berlsuconi's coalition managed to retain majority, the National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale) got 4,234,693 votes, i.e 12.40 % and thus 41 seats.
[edit] July 2005 purge
In July 2005, three of Fini's "lieutenants" (Altero Matteoli, Ignazio La Russa and Maurizio Gasparri), among the most powerful politicians within the party, were eavesdropped in a café close to the Italian Parliament by an intern of the Il Tempo newspaper . [1] They were caught making unflattering remarks on Fini's health and political ability or lackthereof in managing the 2006 national political campaign.
As the news was made public, the three tried to apologize, but Fini fired them from their positions within the party on July 18, before reshaking its infrastructure and assigning new people to the posts vacated. Matteoli, La Russa and Gasparri all three stayed in the party though.
A possible sign of tension within Alleanza Nazionale was when Fini criticized factionalism within the party.
[edit] 2006 general elections
In occasion of the general elections in April 2006, AN re-proposed the House of Freedoms (with new allies). The alliance however was considered to have only a narrow chance of winning after the failing economic policies of the government during 5 years. Surprisingly the centre-right lost by just 24,000 votes in favor of the centre-left coalition (The Union). Individually AN received nearly 5 million votes, amounting to 12.4%. The party won 41 out of 315 senators and 71 out of 630 deputies.
[edit] Party leadership
- President: Gianfranco Fini (1995-...)
- President of National Assembly: Domenico Fisichella (1995-2005), Marcello Perina (2005-06), Francesco Servello (2006-...)
[edit] External links
- Alleanza Nazionale web site
- Azione Giovani web site
- Continuity or change in the ideology of the Alleanza Nazionale
- The annual report of Anti-semitism worldwide, 1997, 1999, 2003 and between.
