1.
Prime Minister of Italy
–
The office of Prime Minister is established by Articles 92 through to 96 of the Constitution of Italy. The Prime Minister is appointed by the President of the Republic after each general election, prior to the establishment of the Italian Republic, the position was called President of the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom of Italy. King Victor Emmanuel III removed Mussolini from office in 1943 and the position was restored with Marshal Pietro Badoglio becoming Prime Minister in 1943, Alcide De Gasperi became the first Prime Minister of the Italian Republic in 1946. The Prime Minister is the President of the Council of Ministers—which holds executive power, the position is similar to those in most other parliamentary systems. The formal Italian order of precedence lists the office as being ceremonially the fourth most important Italian state office, as the President of the Council of Ministers the modern Prime Minister leads the Cabinet. In addition the Prime Minister leads a political party and generally commands the majority in the Parliament. Article 95 of the Italian constitution provides that the Prime Minister directs, the Prime Ministers activity has often consisted of mediating between the various parties in the majority coalition, rather than directing the activity of the Council of Ministers. The office was first established in 1848 in Italys predecessor state, the Kingdom of Sardinia—although it was not mentioned in its constitution, from 1848 to 1861 ten Prime Ministers governed the Kingdom, most of them being right-wing politicians. After the Unification of Italy and the establishment of the kingdom, in fact the candidate for office was appointed by the king, and presided over a very unstable political system. The first Prime Minister was Camillo Benso di Cavour, who was appointed on 23 March 1861, from 1861 to 1911 Historical Right and Left Prime Ministers alternatively governed the country. One of the most famous and influential Prime Ministers of this period was Francesco Crispi, a patriot and statesman. He led the country for six years, from 1887 until 1891, Crispi was internationally famous and often mentioned along with world statesmen such as Bismarck, Gladstone and Salisbury. Originally an enlightened Italian patriot and democrat liberal, he went on to become a bellicose authoritarian prime minister, ally, and admirer of Bismarck. His career ended amid controversy and failure due to becoming involved in a banking scandal. He is often seen as a precursor of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, in 1892 Giovanni Giolitti, a young leftist politician, was elected Prime Minister by king Umberto I, but after less than a year he was forced to resign and Crispi returned to power. In 1903 after a period of instability he was appointed head of the government. Giolitti was the Prime Minister five times between 1892 and 1921 and the second-longest serving Prime Minister in Italian history, after Mussolini, under his influence, the Italian Liberals did not develop as a structured party. They were instead a series of informal personal groupings with no links to political constituencies
2.
Francesco Cossiga
–
Francesco Cossiga, OMRI was an Italian politician of the Christian Democracy party. He was the 42nd Prime Minister of Italy from 1979 to 1980 and he was also a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sassari. Cossiga was born in Sassari in northern Sardinia and he started his political career during World War II. His name is now pronounced, but it was originally pronounced, with the stress on the first syllable, meaning Corsica in Sardinian. He was the cousin of Enrico Berlinguer and he was a minister several times for the Democrazia Cristiana party, notably during his stay at Viminale where he re-structured the Italian police, civil protection and secret services. He was in office at the time of the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro by Red Brigades, and resigned as Minister of the Interior when Moro was found dead in 1978. According to Italian journalist Enrico Deaglio, Cossiga, to justify his lack of action, accused the leaders of CGIL, Cossiga was also minister of internal affairs when Fascist terrorists bombed Bologna station in 1980. Francesco Cossiga first assumed the explosion to have been caused by an accident, Cossiga was elected President of the Italian Senate 12 July 1983, a position he held until 24 June 1985, when he became the President of Italy. Following his resignation as president of the Senate in 1985, Cossiga was elected as President of Italy and this was the first time an Italian presidential candidate had won on the first ballot. It was not until his last two years as President that Cossiga began to some unusual opinions regarding the Italian political system. He opined that the Italian parties, especially the DC and Italian Communist Party, had to take account the deep changes brought about by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Cossiga suffered from bipolar disorder and depression in the last years of his life, tension developed between Cossiga and Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. Cossiga acknowledged his involvement in the establishment of the organization, the Democratic Party of the Left started the procedure of impeachment. Although he threatened to prevent the impeachment procedure by dissolving Parliament, Cossiga resigned two months before the end of his term, on 25 April 1992. In February 1998, Cossiga created the Unione Democratica per la Repubblica, the UDR was a crucial component of the majority that supported the DAlema government in October 1998, after the fall of the Prodi government which lost a vote of confidence. Cossiga declared that his support for DAlema was intended to end the exclusion of the former Communist Party leaders from the premiership in Italy. In 1999 UDR was dissolved and Cossiga returned to his activities as a senator, on 27 November 2006, he resigned from his position as a lifetime senator. His resignation was, however, rejected on 31 January 2007 by a vote of the Senate, Cossiga died on 17 August 2010 from respiratory problems
3.
Giuliano Amato
–
Giuliano Amato OMRI is an Italian politician who twice served as Prime Minister of Italy, first from 1992 to 1993 and again from 2000 to 2001. Later, he was Vice President of the Convention on the Future of Europe that drafted the European Constitution and he is commonly nicknamed dottor Sottile. From 2006 to 2008, he was the Minister of the Interior in Romano Prodis government, on 12 September 2013, President Giorgio Napolitano appointed him to the Constitutional Court of Italy, where he has served since then. Born in Turin into a Sicilian family, Amato grew up in Tuscany, after teaching at the Universities of Modena, Perugia and Florence, he worked as professor of Italian and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Rome La Sapienza from 1975 to 1997. Amato began his career in 1958, when he joined the Italian Socialist Party. He was a Member of Parliament from 1983 to 1993 and he was Undersecretary of State to the Prime Ministers office from 1983 to 1987, Deputy Prime Minister from 1987 to 1988, and Minister for the Treasury from 1987 to 1989. From June 1992 to April 1993, Amato served as Prime Minister, during those ten months, a series of corruption scandals rocked Italy and swept away almost an entire class of political leaders. Amato himself was never implicated, notwithstanding how close he was to Bettino Craxi, fearing that the new system would have effectively blocked investigations on political corruption, Italians took to the streets in massive, spontaneous rallies. President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro refused to sign the decree, deeming it blatantly unconstitutional, while his justice minister Giovanni Conso took the blame, it has been disputed whether Amato was a victim of circumstances or whether he really wanted to save the corruption-ridden system. However, this promise was short-lived, Amato has regularly come under criticism for having such a solemn commitment. Amato was nearly nominated for the Presidency of the Republic and was a contender to replace Michel Camdessus as head of the International Monetary Fund. Amato served as Prime Minister again from April 2000 to May 2001 and he promoted economic competitiveness as well as social protection. In addition to reforms, he pushed ahead with political and institutional reforms, trying to deal with a weak executive. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts, Amato was a Member of the Senate representing the constituency of Grosseto in Tuscany from 2001 to 2006. In 2006, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Olive Tree list, since 2010, he also leads advanced seminar classes at the Master in International Public Affairs of the LUISS School of Government. Amato is married to Ms Diana Amato, a professor of Family Law at the University of Rome and they have two children, Elisa and Lorenzo, and five grandchildren, Giulia, Marco, Simone, Elena and Irene. Giuliano Amato serves as an Honorary Co-Chair for the World Justice Project, the World Justice Project works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity. In 2012 Giuliano Amato was appointed as President of the SantAnna School of Advanced Studies, as alumnus of SantAnna School of Advanced Studies, he guarded close contact with the university, previously heading SantAnna Alumni Association
4.
Amintore Fanfani
–
Amintore Fanfani was an Italian politician and the Prime Minister of Italy for five separate runs. Fanfani and the liberal leader Giovanni Giolitti still hold the record as the only statesmen to have served as Prime Minister of Italy in five non-consecutive periods of office. Fanfani was one of the dominant figures of the Italian Christian Democrats for over three decades and he is considered one of the most important and influential politicians in Italian history. Fanfani was born in Pieve Santo Stefano, in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany, to a large and he graduated in economics and business in 1932 at the Università Cattolica in Milan. He was the author of a number of important works on economic history dealing with religion and his thesis was published in Italian and then in English as Catholicism, Capitalism and Protestantism in 1935. He joined the National Fascist Party supporting the corporatist ideas of the regime promoting collaboration between the classes, which he defended in many articles, some day, he once wrote, the European continent will be organized into a vast supranational area guided by Italy and Germany. Those areas will take authoritarian governments and synchronize their constitutions with Fascist principles and he also wrote for the official magazine of racism in Fascist Italy, The Defence of the Race. Fanfani also became a professor at the School of Fascist Mysticism in Milan and this work brought him to the forefront among US Catholics, especially was much appreciated by John F. Kennedy. During the years he spent in Milan, he knew Giuseppe Dossetti and they formed a group known as the little professors who lived ascetically in monastery cells and walked barefoot. After the surrender of Italy with the Allied armed forces on 8 September 1943, until the Liberation in April 1945, Fanfani fled to Switzerland dodging military service, and organized university courses for Italian refugees. Upon his return to Italy, he was elected vice-secretary of the newly founded Christian Democratic Party and he was as one of the youngest party leaders and a protégé of Alcide De Gasperi, the undisputed leader of the party for the following decade. There is a gulf between the Catholic and the capitalist conception of life. Private economic initiative, in his view, was only if harnessed to the common good. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and was a member of the Commission that drafted the text of the new Republican Constitution, the first article of the new constitution reflected Fanfanis philosophy. He proposed an article, which read, Italy is a republic founded on labor. In 1948 he was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies, under De Gasperi, Fanfani took on a succession of ministries. He was Minister of Labour from 1947–1948 and again from 1948–1950, Minister of Agriculture from 1951–1953, as Minister of Labour, he developed the Fanfani house program for government-built workers homes and put 200,000 of Italys many unemployed to work on a reforestation program. As Minister of Agriculture, he set in motion much of the Christian Democrats land reform program, on 28 February 1949 Fanfani launched a seven-year plan for popular housing to increase the stock of economic housing by means of construction or purchase of economic accommodation
5.
Ciriaco De Mita
–
Ciriaco Luigi De Mita is an Italian politician. He served as the 47th Prime Minister of Italy from 1988 to 1989, De Mita was born in Nusco in the Avellinese hinterland. As a young man De Mita joined Christian Democracy and entered politics and he rose through the ranks of the party, becoming a member of its council in 1956, a member of Parliament in 1963 and a member of the Italian cabinet in 1973. During the next decade he served as Minister of Industry and then as Minister of Foreign Trade, De Mita became chairman of the party in 1982 at a time when its power was declining. He was re-elected in 1986 with 60% support from the party, the Christian Democrats did well in the elections of 1987. De Mita waited a year to become Prime Minister, and then served as Prime Minister for a year, at the beginning of that service, on 16 April 1988, in Forlì, Red Brigades killed Senator Roberto Ruffilli, an advisor of De Mita. De Mita returned in Parliament, after a lag of two years, in 1996 and he then joined the Italian Peoples Party and later Democracy is Freedom - The Daisy, party of which he is regional coordinator for Campania. He headed the Olive Trees list in his region in 2006, offended by the decision, he left the party in retaliation, and joined the Union of the Centre. After the 2008 elections, De Mita was not elected at the Italian Senate, De Mita won a seat in the European Parliament in the June 2009 European election, at age 81, he was the oldest candidate to win a seat in that election. On 25 May 2014 De Mita was elected as mayor of Nusco, his native town
6.
Vincenzo Visco
–
Vincenzo Alfonso Visco is an Italian politician and economist who has served as a government minister. He gained an MSc in Economics at the University of York in 1969 and was awarded an degree in 2004. He served as Finance Minister for a few days in 1993 and then again from 1996 to 2000 and he returned to government in 2006 as Vice-Minister of Economy, a role in which he courted controversy. He was accused of using his influence to benefit Unipol in a bank takeover. He also hit the headlines in this role when he described the debt as a disaster
7.
Bettino Craxi
–
Benedetto Bettino Craxi was an Italian politician, leader of the Italian Socialist Party from 1976 to 1993 and Prime Minister of Italy from 1983 to 1987. He was the first member of the PSI to hold the office and he led the third-longest government in the Italian Republic, and he is considered one of the most powerful and prominent politicians of the so-called First Republic. Craxi was involved in investigations conducted by Mani Pulite judges in Milan, eventually being convicted for corruption, Craxis govermment and party were also supported by future Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a media magnate and personal friend of Craxi. Bettino Craxi maintained strong links with many leaders of the European left, including Felipe González, Bettino Craxi was born in Milan on 24 February 1934. His father, Vittorio Craxi, was a Sicilian lawyer and anti-fascist who was persecuted by the regime of Benito Mussolini, his mother, Maria Ferrari, was a housewife from SantAngelo Lodigiano. After the war Vittorio Craxi assumed the role of vice-prefect in Milan and then the prefect in Como, a few months later Bettino returned to the college, first in Como and then in Cantù, arriving in a step by start the seminary. Vittorio Craxi stood in the 1948 general election for the Popular Democratic Front, Bettino campaigned for his father and later joined the Italian Socialist Party at the age of 17. Craxi was precocious and ascended to many levels of office at an early age. In November 1956 he was elected councilor in SantAngelo Lodigiano from. In 1961 he was excluded from the Central Committee of the Socialist Party by the new Secretary Francesco De Martino, in 1963 he was appointed leader of the Milan Provincial Secretariat of the PSI and in 1965 Craxi became a member of the National Leadership. Meanwhile in November 1964, he was re-elected city councilor in Milan, continuing his public commitment as assessor for Charity, in 1968 general election Craxi was elected for the first time at the Chamber of Deputies with 23,788 votes, in the constituency of Milan–Pavia. Nel 1970 after the end of the PSU alliance, Craxi became Vice Secretary of the PSI, in 1976 the Secretary Francesco De Martino wrote an article in the Socialist newspaper Avanti. Instead for the PSI those elections were a crushing defeat, the votes went down under the threshold of 10%, De Martino, pointing to a new alliance with the Communists, was forced to resign and opened a serious crisis within the party. Bettino Craxi was appointed to the vacant position of National Secretary of the party, ironically, the old guard saw him as short-lived leader, allowing each faction time to regroup. However, he was able to power and implement his policies. He outlined for a line of alternation between the DC and the left-wing, represented by his party, due to the relations between the PCI and the Soviet Union. Firing automatic weapons, the terrorists killed Moros bodyguards and kidnapped him, in 1978 Craxi decided to change the party logo of the party. He chose a red carnation to represent the new course of the party, the party shrank the size of the old hammer and sickle in the lower part of the symbol
.svg)
