Letizia Moratti

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Letizia Moratti.

Letizia Brichetto Arnaboldi Moratti (born 26 November 1946) is an Italian businesswoman and politician. She is the current mayor of Milan. She is Milan's first female mayor.

[edit] Biography

Moratti was born Letizia Brichetto in Milan. She is married to Gianmarco Moratti and has two children.

She is a businesswoman who has worked in insurance and telecommunications. Between 1994 and 1996 she was president of the Italian state television company RAI. In 1999-2000 she was responsible for the growth of Rupert Murdoch's group in Europe.

From 2001 to 2006 she was Education Minister in the second and third Berlusconi cabinet. During her administration criticized reforms of the Italian school system and university teaching was passed.

She ran as a candidate for Mayor of Milan in the 2006 municipal election as the House of Freedoms candidate. She won the election, with over 52% of votes.

On 25 April 2006, while attending a public commemoration of the 1945 Liberation from Fascism and Nazism, she faced strong opposition from the crowd. She was booed and insulted, spat at and pushed. The fact that she was accompanying her disabled father, a former WWII prisoner of war who had experienced detention in a concentration camp, was of little avail. Given her right wing political allegiances - and the electoral support that she expects to receive from sectors of the extreme right - Moratti's participation in the commemoration was viewed by many in the crowd as the act of an opportunist, seeking to improve her image in view of the coming municipal elections.

A similar hostile reaction from the crowd was recorded a few days later, at the May Day celebration, on 1 May 2006 in Milan. Moratti and her entourage were booed out of the manifestation, in spite of having received a formal invitation from a representative of the from the three greater workers' unions. The leader of the centre-left coalition, then future head of the Italian government, Romano Prodi, took the side of Moratti, and strongly criticised the crowd's the insults towards her.