National Alliance (Italy)

National Alliance
President (regent)	Ignazio La Russa
Spokesman	Andrea Ronchi
Founded	27 January 1995
Headquarters	Via della Scrofa, 43 00186 Rome
Newspaper	Il Secolo d'Italia
Membership (2004)	250,000[1]
Ideology	Conservatism[2][3][4], National conservatism, Liberal conservatism, Christian democracy
Coalition	The People of Freedom
International	none
European party	Alliance for Europe of the Nations
European Parliament Group	Union for Europe of the Nations
Website	http://www.alleanzanazionale.it

National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN) is a conservative Italian political party.

Gianfranco Fini was the leader of the party since its foundation in 1995, however he temporarily stepped down in 2008 after being elected to the nominally non-partisan post of President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. The party's acting leader is Ignazio La Russa, who is also Minister of Defence in the fourth cabinet of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Foundation 1.2 Government participation 1.3 Road to a new party 1.4 Renewed controversy in 2008 2 Ideology 3 Factions 4 Popular support 5 Leadership 6 External links 6.1 Factions 6.2 Stephen Roth Institute 7 References

History

Foundation

National Alliance was formed by current secretary Gianfranco Fini from the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the ex-neo-fascist 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.

The logo followed 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, a prominent conservative academic. In January 1995 a party congress officially proclaimed the dissolution of MSI, the rejection of most MSI's ideological stances and the establishment of National Alliance.

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 after the 2001 general election and was Foreign Minister from November 2004 to May 2006.

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", as also Giorgio Almirante, historic leader of MSI, had done before^[5]. He also referred to the Italian Social Republic as belonging to the most shameful pages of the past, and considered fascism part of an era of "absolute evil", something which was hardly acceptable to the few remaining hardliners of the party. As a result, Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who had been at odds with the party on a number of issues for a long-time, and some hardliners left the party and formed Social Action.^[4][6]

In occasion of the 2006 general election, AN ran within the House of Freedoms (with new allies). Surprisingly the centre-right lost by just 24,000 votes in favor of the centre-left The Union. Individually AN received nearly 5 million votes, amounting to 12.3%. On 27 July 2007, a group of splinters, led by Francesco Storace, formed The Right party, which was officially founded on 10 November. Seven MPs of AN, including Teodoro Buontempo and Daniela Santanchè, joined the new party.

Road to a new party

On 18 November, after that Forza Italia collected the signatures of more than 7 million Italians (including Umberto Bossi) against the Romano Prodi's government and in order to ask to the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano to call a fresh election^[7], Silvio Berlusconi announced that Forza Italia would have soon merged or transformed into the The People of Freedom party.^[8][9][10]

After the sudden fall of Prodi II Cabinet on 24 January, the break up of The Union coalition and the subsequent political crisis which lead to a fresh general election, Berlusconi hinted on 25 January that Forza Italia would have probably contested its last election and the new party will be officially founded only after that election. In an atmosphere of reconciliation with Gianfranco Fini, Berlusconi also stated that the new party could see the participation of other parties.^[11] Finally, on 8 February, Berlusconi and Fini agreed to form a joint list under the banner of the "The People of Freedom", allied with Lega Nord.^[12]

Renewed controversy in 2008

In April 2008, senior National Alliance member Gianni Alemanno was elected Mayor of Rome. In September, during a visit to Israel, Alemanno caused outrage when he told to a journalist that racial laws and not fascism under itself was an "absolute evil". Alemanno continued: "I don't think so and I never thought so: fascism was a more complex phenomenon. Many people joined it in good faith, and I don't feel like labelling them with that definition. The racial laws introduced by fascism were the absolute evil and in fact they determined its political and cultural death" In the same interview Alemanno praised Israel, recalled the importance of antisemitisim and reinforced his commitment for the remembrance of the Holocaust.^[13] His comments were condemned by leaders of Rome's Jewish community and by the centre-left opposition.^[14] Ignazio La Russa, the acting leader of National Alliance and Minister of Defence under Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, caused uproar the next day when he said: "I would betray my conscience if I did not recall that other men in uniform, such as those of the army of the Social Republic, who, from their point of view, fought in the belief they were defending their country." Later that day La Russa explained his personal views recalling the words of former Luciano Violante (DS) who also remembered the good faith of repubblichini when President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, while some days later Gianfranco Fini reaffirmed the values of anti-fascism.^[15] Both Alemanno and La Russa praised the words of Fini^[16], as also three former Presidents of the Republic, Francesco Cossiga, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, did in a interview to Corriere della Sera.^[17]

Ideology

National Alliance's political program emphasizes:

• traditional values, being often close to the position of the Roman Catholic Church, despite some socially liberal and secular attitudes;
• law and order, especially laws aimed at controlling immigration and implementing punishment;
• support for Israel^[6], the United States and European integration;
• prohibitionism about any kind of drugs, including marijuana.

Distinguishing itself from the MSI, the party has distanced itself from Benito Mussolini and Fascism and made efforts to improve relations with Jewish groups.^[4] With most hardliners leaving the party^[4][6], it seeks to present itself as a respectable conservative party and to join forces with Forza Italia in the European People's Party and, eventually, in a united party of the centre-right.

Although the party approves market economy and hold favourable views on liberalizations and the privatization of state industries, however AN is more to the left than Forza Italia on economic issues and sometimes supports statist policies. That is why the party is strong in Rome and Lazio, where most public administrations are. Moreover AN presents itself as a party promoting national cohesion, national identity and patriotism.

Regarding institutional reforms, the party is a long-time supporter presidentialism and first-past-the-post, and, recently, it came to support also federalism and to fully accept the alliance with Lega Nord, although the relations with that party can be tense at times, especially about issues regarding national unity.

Gianfranco Fini, a modernizer who sees Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron as models, has impressed an ambitious political line to the party, combining the pillars of conservative ideology like security, family values and patriotism with a progressive approach in other areas such as stem-cell research and supporting voting rights for legal aliens. Anyway some of these positions are not shared by many members of the party, most of whom staunchly oppose stem-cell research and artificial insemination.^[6]

Factions

National Alliance is a heterogeneous political party and within it members are divided in different factions, some of them very organized:

• Protagonist Right (Destra Protagonista), headed by Maurizio Gasparri and Ignazio La Russa, is the bigger faction and the closest to Forza Italia, due to its liberal-conservative stances.
• New Alliance (Nuova Alleanza), formerly called Right and Freedom (Destra e Libertà), headed by Altero Matteoli and Adolfo Urso, is formed by the staunchest supporters of Gianfranco Fini within the party and supports a liberal political agenda.
• Social Right (Destra Sociale), led by Gianni Alemanno, advocates a more "social" approach to economic policy and is considered at the right of the party. It has close ties with the General Union of Labour.
• Christian Reformists (Cristiano Riformisti), led by Antonio Mazzochi (ex-DC) and Pietro Armani (ex-PRI), is a new Christian-democratic faction within the party, which campaigns for Catholic values and for the admission of the party into the European People's Party.

In the party there is also a group named Ethic-Religious Council, whose board members include Gaetano Rebecchini (Founder, ex-DC), Riccardo Pedrizzi (President), Franco Tofoni (Vice President), Luigi Gagliardi (General Secretary), Alfredo Mantovano, Antonio Mazzocchi and Riccardo Migliori. This is not a faction but an official organism within the party and express the official position of the party on ethical and religious matters. Sometimes the group criticizes Gianfranco Fini for his liberal views on abortion, artificial insemination and stem-cell research, which led some notable ex-DC members as Publio Fiori to leave the party. Some members of the Council, such as Pedrizzi and Mantovano are described as members of an unofficial Catholic Right faction.

Popular support

The party has roughly 10-15% support across Italy, having its 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 Sicily (10.9%), while competing in the North-East (Friuli-Venezia Giulia 15.5% and Veneto 11.3%).

The party had a good showing in the first general election to which it took part (13.5% in 1994) and reached 15.7% in 1996, when Fini tried for the first time to replace Silvio Berlusconi as leader of the centre-right. From that moment the party suffered an electoral decline, but remains the third force of Italian politics.

In the 2006 general election, the last election to which the party took party with its own list, it won 12.3% of the vote, securing 71 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 41 in the Senate. In the 2008 general election the party got 90 deputies^[18] and 48 senators^[19] elected.

The electoral results of National Alliance in the 10 most populated Regions of Italy are shown in the table below.

	1994 general	1995 regional	1996 general	1999 European	2000 regional	2001 general	2004 European	2005 regional	2006 general
Piedmont	8.3	11.2	12.1	7.5	11.9	9.2	8.8	9.5	11.8
Lombardy	5.8	10.0	9.0	6.0	9.7	8.6	7.2	8.7	10.2
Veneto	7.7	10.7	11.7	8.3	9.8	8.5	9.0	8.1	11.3
Emilia-Romagna	9.0	10.3	11.5	8.6	11.4	9.7	8.4	8.9	10.2
Tuscany	10.9	13.1	15.8	10.9	14.9	13.0	10.9	10.9	12.6
Lazio	25.3	24.5	28.9	20.3	23.1	20.4	18.4	23.9[20]	18.6
Campania	20.3	18.3	18.7	10.7	11.2	13.1	13.2	10.6	12.6
Apulia	27.5[21]	20.4	17.9	12.7	15.5	15.3	16.0	12.1	13.2
Calabria	17.2	16.3	23.4	10.2	10.4	15.2	15.5	9.9	11.0
Sicily	14.0	14.1 (1996)	16.4	12.1	11.3 (2001)	10.7	14.5	10.6 (2006)	10.9
ITALY	13.5	-	15.7	10.3	-	12.0	11.3	-	12.3

Leadership

• President: Gianfranco Fini (1995–2008), Ignazio La Russa (regent, 2008–...)
  • Head of Political Secretariat: Donato Lamorte (1995–2002), Andrea Ronchi (2002–2004), Carmelo Briguglio (2002–2004), Donato Lamorte (2004–...)
  • Spokesman: Maurizio Gasparri (1995–1997), Adolfo Urso (1997–2001), Antonio Landolfi (2001–2005), Andrea Ronchi (2005-...)
• President of National Assembly: Domenico Fisichella (1995–2005), Marcello Perina (2005–2006), Francesco Servello (2006–...)
• Organizational Coordinator: Giuseppe Tatarella (1995–1998), Altero Matteoli (1998–2002), Donato Lamorte (2002–2004), Italo Bocchino (2004–2005), Marco Martinelli (2005–...)

• Party Leader at the Chamber of Deputies: Raffaele Valensise (1994–1996), Giuseppe Tatarella (1996–1998), Gustavo Selva (1998–2001), Ignazio La Russa (2001–2003), Gian Franco Anedda (2003–2004), Iganzio La Russa (2004–2008), Italo Bocchino (deputy-leader of PdL's group, 2008–...)
• Party Leader at the Senate: Giulio Maceratini (1994–2001), Domenico Nania (2001–2006), Altero Matteoli (2006-2008), Maurizio Gasparri (leader of PdL's group, 2008–...)
• Party Leader at the European Parliament: Cristiana Muscardini (1994–2004), Roberta Angelilli (2004–...)

External links

• Official website
• Azione Giovani

Factions

• Protagonist Right
• New Alliance
• Social Right
• Christian Reformists

Stephen Roth Institute

• Continuity or change in the ideology of the Alleanza Nazionale
• The annual report of Anti-semitism worldwide, 2006

References

Political parties in Italy (, historical parties) Major The People of Freedom – Democratic Party Medium Lega Nord – Union of Christian and Centre Democrats – Italy of Values – Communist Refoundation Party Minor Movement for Autonomy – Italian Radicals – Italian Republican Party – Liberal Democrats – White Rose – Alliance of the Centre – The Right – Democratic Left – Socialist Party – Federation of the Greens – Party of Italian Communists – Tricolour Flame – New Force – Workers' Communist Party – Associative Movement Italians Abroad Regional Valdotanian Union – Edelweiss Aosta Valley – Autonomist Federation – Valdotanian Renewal – Lively Aosta Valley – Moderates for Piedmont – South Tyrolean People's Party – The Libertarians – South Tyrolean Freedom – Union for Trentino – Trentino Tyrolean Autonomist Party – North-East Project – Veneto for the EPP – UDEUR Populars – Sardinian Reformers – Sardinian People's Party – Sardinian Democratic Union – Sardinian Action Party List of political parties in Italy - Politics of Italy