Gianfranco Fini
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Gianfranco Fini (born January 3, 1952) is an Italian politician.
Fini was born in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna. He is married and has one daughter, holds a degree in psychology and is a journalist by trade (since 1979).
He ran for the mayorship of Rome in 1993 but was defeated by Francesco Rutelli. He is the leader of the conservative National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale), its less than lukewarm defense of free-market economics and neoliberalism, in favor of a vision that embraces limited participation of the state in the economy, is noteworthy and hints at the parties former roots.
He was minister of foreign affairs and vice-president of the council of ministers in the Berlusconi government.
Early years
National Secretary of Fronte della Gioventù ("Youth Front") in 1977, he was first elected as a representative to the Camera dei Deputati (or Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Italian Parliament) on June 26, 1983 with the far-right MSI-DN party. He was also the latter's national secretary from December 1987 to January 1990 and again from July 1991 to January 1995.
In the 1990s he gradually began to move the party away from its loosely neo-fascist political line towards a mainstream conservative ideology. Some members left, but most remained, and in 1994, Fini merged the MSI-DN with conservative elements of the disbanded Christian Democrats to form Alleanza Nazionale.
In January 1995, at a party conference in the town Fiuggi, not far from Rome, he was officially elected president of the then newly-formed Alleanza Nazionale, a position he has held ever since. The historical significance of the conference has led to it commonly being referred to as "la svolta di Fiuggi" (the turning point at Fiuggi) in Italian political parlance.
Coalition
Fini and his party have been part of Berlusconi's center-right 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 of 2002 represents the Italian Government at the European Convention.
Controversies
Although the National Alliance draws most of its electoral support from Italy's poor south, Gianfranco Fini is a native of the rich northern city of Bologna - itself, paradoxically, a traditional communist stronghold.
He remains the politician who in 1992 and 1994 praised Italy's wartime dictator Benito Mussolini "the greatest statesman of the twentieth century" and declared “Fascism has a tradition of honesty, correctness and good government”.
During a visit to the Fosse Ardeatine - where 335 Italians, most of them Jews, were killed by the Germans on 24 March 1944, to pay homage to the victims, he took the opportunity to declare: "Nobody can ask us to deny our past, to break a continuity that is rooted at the base of our party, at the very moment when we are saying clearly that we have no desire to restore fascism. Like all Italians, we too are post-fascists. Not neo-fascists." Later in 1994 Mr Fini went on to declare in parliament: "Anti-fascism was an essential moment in Italy’s return to the values of democracy."
He was in Genoa during the 27th G-8 Summit and maintained close contact with the police and security forces. For at least some of this time, he was actually ensconced at police headquarters.
Law No. 189 of 30 July 2002, known as the "Bossi-Fini law" after the names of the politicians who proposed it, amends the 1998 immigration law in Italy and introduces new clauses. New legislation to regulate immigration into Italy came into force in August 2002, and a decree on procedures for regularising the situation of illegal immigrants already in the country was adopted in September. The centre-right government's new immigration legislation has been criticised by both trade unions and employers' organisations.
During his first visit to Israel on 23-24 November 2003, he disowned fascism, claiming that it was an expression of “absolute evil”, and denounced the racist laws that were imposed under fascism, adding that many Italians had acted with "laziness, indifference, complicity and cowardice" in not opposing the anti-Jewish laws introduced in 1938 in imitation of Nazi Germany. He also claimed that he had changed his mind about Benito Mussolini.
This led Mussolini's granddaughter, Alessandra, a longtime member of the MSI/AN, to leave the party (saying her family's honour had been abused) and found her own party, Libertà di Azione - Freedom for Action (later renamed Azione Sociale), which would ally itself with other neo-fascist parties in Alternativa Sociale.
However, Fini can take comfort from an opinion poll, published last month, suggesting that his recent condemnation of fascism has the support of 70% of National Alliance supporters.
It is a further stage in the effort by Fini to detach the party, now part of the ruling government coalition, from its fascist heritage after the cosmetic changes that were decided in Fiuggi on 27 January 1995. Fini’s statements sparked controversy in his party, showing the fascist sympathies that persist within its ranks, despite its supposed evolution.
Members of his own party were none too happy with the new line. Mirko Tremaglia, the minister for Italians abroad and a veteran of Mussolini's last stand Republic of Salo, said he was proud of his entire personal history, including when he risked his life to "save Italy from catastrophe".
As well as making clear repudiations of Italy's fascist past and calling for votes for non-citizen immigrants, Fini has taken up other positions that run contrary to the fascist tradition in Italy. He is pro-European Union and pro-US - neither of which fit easy with the claim that he is still a fascist. After the attentates of September 11, 2001, National Alliance posters across Italy declared "Solidarity with the United States" - Italian fascists despise the United States for obvious historical reasons.
He is also explicitly in favour of capitalism and the free market. Again this is a break not only with old style Italian corporatist fascism but also the later post-war concept of the "social right" which believed in large scale state ownership and nationalisation.
National Alliance also supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Gianfranco Fini is still left with the problem of how to renew the leadership of his party. With rare exceptions, it still consists of leaders who came out of the MSI, people often committed to an ideology of radical protest and often with turbulent militant pasts. Analysts have pointed out that still a wide gap exists between Fini, who has won respectability among the other political parties, and the rank and file of the organisation, since many AN militants are still stuck on black shirts, fascist salutes and Mussolini literature, which is now officially banned.
In the campaign for the referenda of June 2005, concerning the Italian law on artificial insemination techniques, considered by some the most restrictive in the world except for Costa Rica's, Fini surprisingly declared he would vote "Yes" to three of four referenda, splitting his own party, which is more aligned with the Catholic Church.
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 with a few friends, which in his words "made me sick for two days".
Two National Alliance MPs offered their backing to Paolo Di Canio, the Serie A player fined for giving the straight-arm salute and proposed a collection to pay the €10,000 penalty imposed on the Lazio forward by Italian football's disciplinary authority.
Among those who endorsed the whipround was Fini's wife, Daniela. Ms Fini said the collection for Di Canio would be "an act of solidarity". She complained that leftwing players and supporters had been given less onerous penalties for political gestures and added: "If politics has no place in the stadium, then it should have no place there for anyone."
Fini's spokesman, Salvatore Sottile, has been arrested in the scandal the involved pretender Vittorio Emanuele III and other political figures during June 2006.
External links
- [Italian government: official Gianfranco Fini biography]
- [Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: official Gianfranco Fini biography]
- [BBC profile]
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