Umberto Bossi
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Umberto Bossi (born September 19, 1941) is an Italian politician, leader of the Northern League, a party seeking autonomy or independence for northern Italy. He is married to Manuela Marrone and has four sons (of which one from his first wife).
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[edit] Birth and education
Umberto Bossi was born in 1943 in Cassano Magnago, in the province of Varese (Lombardy). He finished scientific high school (liceo scientifico) and later began studying medicine at the University of Pavia. At the University of Pavia, in February 1979 he met Bruno Salvadori, leader of the Valdotanian Union, who introduced him to autonomism.
[edit] Politics
- See also: Ideology of the Northern League
Before becoming a politician, Bossi was a sympathiser of the Italian Communist Party in his early years. After the death of Salvadori in a car accident during the summer of 1980, Bossi began focusing more on Lombardy. After two years, the Lombard autonomist league was born. In that period Bossi met his second wife, Manuela Marrone, then a teacher with an interest in local dialects, who hosted the league's headquarters in her flat.
The Lega Lombarda would later seek alliances with similar movements in Veneto and Piedmont, forming the Northern League, of which he is still the federal secretary. He became the undisputed and unchallenged leader of the party, a position that he has maintained to this day, even after a serious stroke.
When the scandals of Tangentopoli were unveiled from 1992 on, Bossi rode the wave, presenting himself as the new man in politics, set out to sweep away corruption and incompetence. Bossi himself, however, was sentenced to 8 months in prison, along with Lega Nord's treasurer at the time of the events Alessandro Patelli, for receiving a 200-million lire bribe in a trial that sentenced also many of the politicians he routinely attacked, as Bettino Craxi, Arnaldo Forlani and others.
[edit] Peculiar style
Umberto Bossi is often described by some as a neo-fascist, racist (against immigrants and southern Italians, though his own wife is allegedly from southern Italy, being actually a Lombard of Southern ancestry), low-cultured maverick. His politics has been compared by critics to that of the Austrian nationalist leader, Jörg Haider, whose extreme right-wing opinions and political agenda concerned Europe during the years of Bossi's popularity peak. His supporters appreciate his easily comprehensible speeches, which are despised by many as they often contain blatant insults, references to unlikely conspiracy theories, and gestures difficult to misunderstand.
Above all of Bossi's expressions, one is especially remembered: "La Lega ce l'ha duro!" ("The Lega's got a boner!"), uttered in front of a large public of supporters gathered at a meeting in Pontida in the early years of Lega's success. The phrase sounds quite awkward in Italian, as "Lega" is actually a feminine word. The expression gave birth to the Italian neologism celodurismo, "bonerism", indicating populistic and demagogic politics appealing to the lowest instincts of electors.
Speaking to a public in Venice, and seeing that a woman had a put an Italian flag on her terrace to silently protest against the Lega Nord, he shouted in the microphone, while delivering his speech and in front of national TV, "Madam, hang that flag in the toilet!" (using the harsh Italian word cesso). For this, he was later prosecuted for insulting the flag.
Bossi named his two last sons with unusual, politically-charged names, Roberto Libertà (libertà means freedom, and it is a feminine noun in Italian) and Eridano Sirio (Eridano would be the name of an ancient god of the Po river).
[edit] Institutional experience
Bossi began his institutional career in 1987 as the only senator of the Lega Nord, of which he was the leader. He was then given the nickname senatur (pron. [sena'tu:r]), senator in Lombard, which stuck even when he was later elected as a MP in the Italian Chamber of Deputies.
He was instrumental in the unexpected victory of Silvio Berlusconi's coalition in 1994, but he broke the alliance after just a few months, with the first Berlusconi cabinet collapsing before Christmas 1994.
Bossi later attacked repeatedly Berlusconi with direct verbal violence, using much of his rhetorics. Terms he used included: Berlus-kaiser, Berluscazz ("Berluscock"), Berlusconi mafioso. He also threatened mining the antennas that spread the signals of Berlusconi's televisions, a threat that a few extremist followers took seriously, carrying out some minor sabotage actions; these never compromised Berlusconi's TV stations, however, and constituted mostly a curiosity in the news.
After a subsidiary of the Berlusconi empire granted a loan to relieve the waning finances of Lega Nord, Bossi agreed to return to an alliance with Berlusconi, which ultimately led to the (this time, easily predicted) 2001 electoral victory.
He then served in Silvio Berlusconi's second cabinet as Reforms Minister. However, after suffering a serious stroke on March 11, 2004, which seriously impaired his speech, he quit on July 19, 2004 to take up a seat as a member of the European Parliament. Bossi is now slowly returning to active politics.
[edit] External links
- Official biography from the Web site of Lega Nord. (Italian)
- The League, Bossi and what comes after, biography of Bossi and storyline of the League by the conservative magazine Ideazione. (Italian)
- Padanian poker's last hand, biography by the left-wing newspaper L'Unità. (Italian)
