Roberto Calderoli | |
---|---|
Minister of Regional Affairs and Autonomies | |
Assumed office 22 October 2022 | |
Prime Minister | Giorgia Meloni |
Preceded by | Mariastella Gelmini |
Minister of Legislative Simplification | |
In office 8 May 2008 –16 November 2011 | |
Prime Minister | Silvio Berlusconi |
Succeeded by | Filippo Patroni Griffi |
Member of the Senate of the Republic | |
Assumed office 30 May 2001 | |
Constituency | Lombardy (2001–06) Piedmont (2006–08) Lombardy (since 2008) |
Member of the Chamber of Deputies | |
In office 23 April 1992 –29 May 2001 | |
Constituency | Lombardy |
Vice President of the Senate of the Republic | |
In office 21 March 2013 –12 October 2022 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Bergamo,Italy | 18 April 1956
Political party | Lega Nord Lega per Salvini Premier |
Residence(s) | Mozzo,Lombardy |
Profession | Maxillofacial surgeon |
Roberto Calderoli (born 18 April 1956) is an Italian politician and a member of the Senate of the Republic. He was a Minister without portfolio for Legislative Simplification in the Berlusconi IV Cabinet. He previously served as Minister without portfolio for Reforms and Devolution in the Berlusconi II Cabinet (since 20 June 2004) and in the Berlusconi III Cabinet (until 18 February 2006,when he resigned following a controversy). A leading member of Lega Nord,he is regarded as representing the right wing of the political spectrum. [1] He is serving as minister of Regional Affairs and Autonomies in the Meloni Cabinet since 2022.
Calderoli is often the centre of public controversies,usually because of racist,xenophobic,or offensive public remarks.In July 2013,Calderoli insulted Italy's first black Minister,Italo-Congolese Cécile Kyenge,saying:"Whenever I see Minister Kyenge,I cannot help but think of an orangutan." [2]
A native of Bergamo and a dentist like many of his relatives,Calderoli started his political experience with the Lega Lombarda,a precursor of the federated Northern League,of which he was the president in 1993 and national secretary between 1995 and 2002.
Between 1990 and 1995,he sat in the town council in Bergamo,and since 2002 he has been the coordinator of the national secretariat of the Northern League. He was an MP in the Chamber of Deputies between 1992 and 2001,as a representative of the Northern League-Padania,and for a while he was president of the Commission for Social Affairs.
In the 2001 Italian general election,he was elected to the Senate of Italy in the first-past-the-post constituency of Albino. He then became the vice-president of the Senate until July 2004,when he was appointed Minister for Institutional Reforms in the place of Umberto Bossi,the longtime leader of the Northern League who had suffered a serious stroke and could not perform his duties. During his mandate,he also wrote a new electoral law based on proportional representation with a strong majority premium rather than plurality voting system,which was first introduced in Italy in 1994 by a referendum. Successively,Calderoli himself criticized the electoral law he wrote by defining it una porcata (literally,"a piggish stuff"). [3]
Calderoli is currently serving as secretary of Lega per Salvini Premier. [4]
A new electoral law was established in 2005 under Calderoli's rapporteurship,and then dubbed Calderoli Law,and it is a form of semi-proportional representation. A party presents its own closed list and it can join other parties in alliances. The coalition which receives a plurality automatically wins at least 26 seats. Respecting this condition,seats are divided between coalitions,and subsequently to party lists,using the largest remainder method with a Hare quota. To receive seats,a party must overcome the barrier of 8% of the vote if it contests a single race,or of 3% of the vote if it runs in alliance. The change in the electoral law was strongly requested by the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats,and finally agreed by Berlusconi,although criticised (including by political scientist Giovanni Sartori) for its comeback to proportionalism and its timing,less than one year before general elections. Calderoli himself defined the electoral law as a porcata –a pork affair.
During the international crisis sparked by the publishing of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons,Calderoli made statements on 8 February 2006 that were favourable to usage of force against Muslims and asked for the intervention of Pope Benedict XVI to form a "coalition",referencing the battles of Lepanto and Vienna.
On 15 February 2006,he announced he would wear a T-shirt with the Muhammad cartoons. Later that evening,just after the news broadcast on state flagship television station Rai Uno,during a live interview he said:"I am wearing one of those T-shirts even now",and promptly unbuttoned his shirt,revealing a T-shirt with a caricature emblazoned on it. [5] Though the press reported it to be one of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons,it was actually the cartoon published on the France Soir's front page in the 1 February 2006 issue,the very day the same newspaper published the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Actually,Calderoli did not show one of the cartoons that caused the international crisis. [6]
The event was widely published in Libya (a former colony of Italy),and about 1,000 people gathered for a protest and began throwing rocks and bottles toward the Italian consulate in Benghazi which they set ablaze. In clashes with the police,at least eleven people died and twenty-five were wounded. [7]
Subsequently,Silvio Berlusconi asked Calderoli to resign because his act was against the government's political line;in an interview given to Italian newspaper La Repubblica ,Calderoli declared that he would not resign. He eventually gave in to the massive pressure coming from all parties (and lack of support in his own),and resigned on 18 February 2006. [8]
Responding to criticism about a controversial electoral law that he penned in 2006,Calderoli affirmed:"I wrote [the law],but honestly it is a pig-sty." [9]
Following Italy's win against France in the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final,Calderoli criticized France for having "sacrificed its identity for results by fielding negroes,Muslims and Communists". [10] [11] [12] These comments drew many protests from the French embassy,the Italian Green Party who said that Calderoli is "no better than the Ku Klux Klan",[ citation needed ] and the Party of Italian Communists,among others. Moreover,Calderoli said the centre-left government "would very probably have supported this France with no identity and the headbutts of Zidane".[ citation needed ]
In June 2008 Calderoli said in a TV interview:"It is obvious that there are ethnic groups and populations that are more inclined to work and others not. And there is greater predisposition for crime by someone over others." [13]
On 13 July 2013,Calderoli told a Lega Nord rally in Treviglio that Integration minister Cécile Kyenge,who was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo but has Italian citizenship,would be better off working as a minister "in her country." [14] According to the Corriere della Sera ,which reported the event,he added:"I love animals –bears and wolves,as is known –but when I see the pictures of Kyenge I cannot but think of the features of an orangutan,even if I'm not saying she is one." [14]
In November 2009,after a national referendum resulted in the changing the Swiss Federal Constitution so that it prohibited the construction of minarets,Calderoli told Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata that Switzerland had sent a clear signal:"Yes to church towers,no to minarets." He further stated that he wished Switzerland would act as a model for Italy in this regard. [15]
Lega Nord,whose complete name is Lega Nord per l'Indipendenza della Padania,is a right-wing,federalist,populist and conservative political party in Italy. In the run-up of the 2018 general election,the party was rebranded as Lega (transl. League),without changing its official name. The party was nonetheless frequently referred to only as "Lega" even before the rebranding,and informally as the Carroccio. The party's latest elected leader was Matteo Salvini.
The history of the Italian Republic concerns the events relating to the history of Italy that have occurred since 1946,when Italy became a republic after the 1946 Italian institutional referendum. The Italian republican history is generally divided into two phases,the First and Second Republic.
Matteo Salvini is an Italian politician who has served as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport since 2022. He has been Federal Secretary of Italy's Lega Nord party since December 2013 and an Italian senator since March 2018. Salvini represented Northwestern Italy in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2018.
The Movement for Autonomy is a regionalist and Christian-democratic political party in Italy,based in Sicily. The MpA,whose founder and leader is Raffaele Lombardo,advocates for greater economic development,autonomy and legislative powers for Sicily and the other regions of southern Italy.
Giancarlo Giorgetti is an Italian politician and prominent member of the League,of which he became deputy secretary in 2016. Since October 2022,Giorgetti has served as Minister of Economy and Finance in the government of Giorgia Meloni. Previously,he was Secretary of the Council of Ministers from June 2018 until September 2019,in the government of Giuseppe Conte and later Minister of Economic Development from February 2021 until October 2022,in the government of Mario Draghi.
Lega Lombarda,whose complete name is Lega Lombarda per Salvini Premier,is a regionalist political party active in Lombardy. Established in 1984,it was one of the founding "national" sections of Lega Nord (LN) in 1991 and has been the regional section of Lega per Salvini Premier (LSP) in Lombardy since 2020. Along with Liga Veneta,the LL has formed the bulk of the federal party (LN/LSP),which hs been led by Lombards since its foundation.
The third Berlusconi government was the cabinet of the government of Italy from 23 April 2005 to 17 May 2006. It was the 58th cabinet of the Italian Republic,and the second cabinet of the XIV Legislature.
Lombardy renewed its delegation to the Italian Senate on April 9,2006. This election was a part of national Italian general election of 2006 even if,according to the Italian Constitution,every senatorial challenge in each Region is a single and independent race.
The 2018 Italian general election was held on 4 March 2018 after the Italian Parliament was dissolved by President Sergio Mattarella on 28 December 2017. Voters were electing the 630 members of the Chamber of Deputies and the 315 elective members of the Senate of the Republic for the 18th legislature of the Italian Republic since 1948. The election took place concurrently with the Lombard and Lazio regional elections. No party or coalition gained an absolute majority in the parliament,even though the centre-right coalition won a plurality of seats as a coalition,and the Five Star Movement (M5S) won a plurality of seats as an individual party.
The centre-right coalition is a political alliance of political parties in Italy active under several forms and names since 1994,when Silvio Berlusconi entered politics and formed the Forza Italia party. It has mostly competed with the centre-left coalition. It is composed of right-leaning parties in the Italian political arena,which generally advocate tax reduction and oppose immigration,and in some cases are eurosceptic.
Cécile Kashetu Kyenge is an Italian politician and ophthalmologist. She was the Minister for Integration in the 2013–14 Letta Cabinet. From 2014 until 2019,she was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). Kyenge is of Congolese descent.
The Parliament of Padania,the former Nord and former Parliament House of Mantua,is a body set up by Lega Nord with its internal representation almost electoral basin. It consists of all administrators,regional councillors,mayors and elected MPs in various local and national administrations. The first official headquarters of the plenary meetings of the newborn Po Parliament took place in Villa Riva Berni to Bagnolo San Vito (MN). The second seat in the 2007-2011 of the meetings was located in Vicenza in villa Bonin Maistrello,via dell'oreficeria 21.
Forza Italia is a centre-right political party in Italy,whose ideology includes elements of liberal conservatism,Christian democracy,liberalism and populism. FI is a member of the European People's Party. Silvio Berlusconi was the party's leader and president until his death in 2023. The party has since been led by Antonio Tajani,who had been vice president and coordinatior and now functions as secretary. Other leading members include Elisabetta Casellati.
Guido Crosetto is an Italian businessman and politician,who has been serving as Minister of Defence since 22 October 2022 in the government of Giorgia Meloni.
Umberto Bossi is an Italian politician and former leader of Lega Nord,a party seeking autonomy or independence for Northern Italy or Padania. He is married to the Sicilian Manuela Marrone,and has four sons,of whom one was from his first wife.
Giovanni Fava is an Italian politician of Lega Nord,MP in the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 28 April 2006 to 4 June 2013 and Mayor of Pomponesco for two consecutive full terms from 22 November 1993 to 13 May 2001.
In the 2018 Italian general election,no political group or party won an outright majority,resulting in a hung parliament. On 4 March,the centre-right coalition,in which Matteo Salvini's League emerged as the main political force,won a plurality of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate,while the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) led by Luigi Di Maio became the party with the largest number of votes. The centre-left coalition,led by Matteo Renzi and the then-governing Democratic Party (PD),came third. Protracted negotiations were required before a government formation could be ultimated.
The first Conte government was the 65th government of the Italian Republic. It was led by Giuseppe Conte,an independent,and it was in office from 1 June 2018 to 5 September 2019.
The law no. 270 of 21 December 2005 was a proportional electoral law with a majority prize and blocked lists that regulated the election of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in Italy in 2006,2008 and 2013.
Lega,whose official name is Lega per Salvini Premier,is a right-wing populist political party in Italy,led by Matteo Salvini. The LSP is the informal successor of Lega Nord.