National Alliance

National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN) is a national-conservative Italian political party. It is led by Gianfranco Fini and it is part of the House of Freedoms coalition.

History

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. Its headquarters are located in Rome.

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, and echoes the name of the left-wing Democratic Alliance, a contemporary short-lived project of a lay centre-left coalition whose founder was Ferdinando Adornato.

In January 1995, as officially Gianfranco Fini proclaimed MSI's dissolution, and the foundation of the AN, he announced the abandonment MSI's ideological stances, symbols, gestures and salutes that had closely identified it with the Mussolinian past.

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 in 2001 and became 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". He also referred to the RSI as belonging to the most shameful pages of the past, and considered fascism part of an era of "absolute evil".

As a result, Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and some hardliners left the party; she stated that "absolute evil" for her was piazzale Loreto, the square in Milan where her grandfather remains were shown to the public in the final days of World War II.

In July 2005, three of Fini's "lieutenants" (Altero Matteoli, Ignazio La Russa and Maurizio Gasparri), among the most powerful politicians within the party, were eavesdropped in a café close to the Italian Parliament by an intern of the Il Tempo newspaper. [2] They were caught making unflattering remarks on Fini's health and political ability or lack thereof in managing the 2006 national political campaign. As the news was made public, the three tried to apologize, but Fini fired them from their positions within the party on July 18, before reshaking its infrastructure and assigning new people to the posts vacated. Matteoli, La Russa and Gasparri all three stayed in the party though.

2006 general elections

In occasion of the general elections in April 2006, AN re-proposed the House of Freedoms (with new allies). The alliance however was considered to have only a narrow chance of winning after the failing economic policies of the government during 5 years. Surprisingly the centre-right lost by just 24,000 votes in favor of the centre-left coalition (The Union). Individually AN received nearly 5 million votes, amounting to 12.3%. The party won 41 out of 315 senators and 71 out of 630 deputies.

Ideology

National Alliance's political program emphasizes:

• Catholicism, close to the official Church position;
• law and order, especially laws aimed at controlling immigration and promoting national cohesion.

Distinguishing itself from the MSI, the party has distanced itself from Benito Mussolini and Fascism and made efforts to improve relations with Jewish groups. With most hardliners leaving the party, 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 an united party of the centre-right.

Nearly two-thirds of the party's supporters approve of the capitalist system and hold favourable views on the privatisation of state industries, however AN is more to the left from Forza Italia on economic issues and sometimes supports statist policies.

Gianfranco Fini, a modernizer, 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.

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), formerely 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.
• R-Right (D-Destra), led by Francesco Storace and formed as a split from the Social Right, is the most conservative component of the party, proud of the MSI's tradition and the only one which openly opposes Gianfranco Fini's leadership. After that on 3 July 2007 Storace left AN, the future of the faction is unclear; it is likely that most of its members will follow their leader in The Right party, a proposed party to be launched in October.
• 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), Gustavo Selva (Honorary President, ex-DC), 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 a unofficial Catholic Right faction.

Popular support

Logo of the National Alliance for the 2006 general election.

The party has roughly 10-15% support across Italy, having it 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%) with the Lega Nord, its ally in the centre-right House of Freedoms coalition. The relationship of AN with the Northern League can be tense at times, especially about issues of national unity, but the two parties share views on other issues such as immigration; AN's views are normally slightly more moderate than Lega Nord's.

The party had a good showing in the first general election contested (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 1998, it had a membership of 485,657 in 11,539 branches, 89 deputies and 41 senators in the Italian Parliament and nine members of the European Parliament.

In the Italian general election, 2006 May 2001 general election AN obtained 96 seats out of 630 in the Chamber of Deputies and 46 seats out of 324 in the Senate. The party lost a few key seats in the 2003 local elections such as the Province of Rome, but its position remained firm. The party obtained 11.5% of the vote and 9 seats in the June 2004 European Parliament elections. In the 2005 regional elections AN lost almost all the remaining key seats, such as the Region of Lazio.

For the April 2006 general election, the party presented a new logo, which includes the name of Fini in it. In the Lower chamber, AN received 4,703,256 votes (12.3%), thus securing 71 seats. In Senate, where Berlsuconi's coalition managed to retain majority, the National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale) got 4,234,693 votes (12.4%) and thus 41 seats.

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

Leadership

• President: Gianfranco Fini (1995-...)
  • Head of Political Secretariat: Donato Lamorte (1995-2002), Andrea Ronchi (2002-04), Carmelo Briguglio (2002-04), Donato Lamorte (2004-...)
  • Spokesman: Maurizio Gasparri (1995-97), Adolfo Urso (1997-2001), Antonio Landolfi (2001-05), Andrea Ronchi (2005-...)
• President of National Assembly: Domenico Fisichella (1995-2005), Marcello Perina (2005-06), Francesco Servello (2006-...)
• Organizational Coordinator: Giuseppe Tatarella (1995-98), Altero Matteoli (1998-2002), Donato Lamorte (2002-04), Italo Bocchino (2004-05), Marco Martinelli (2005-...)

• Party Leader at the Italian Chamber of Deputies: Raffaele Valesinese (1994-96), Giuseppe Tatarella (1996-98), Gustavo Selva (1998-2001), Ignazio La Russa (2001-03), Gian Franco Anedda (2003-04), Iganzio La Russa (2004-...)
• Party Leader at the Italian Senate: Giulio Maceratini (1994-2001), Domenico Nania (2001-06), Altero Matteoli (2006-...)
• 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

Sources

• Continuity or change in the ideology of the Alleanza Nazionale
• The annual report of Anti-semitism worldwide, 1997, 1999, 2003 and between.

References

Political parties in Italy (complete version, historical parties)
The Union	Democratic Party – Communist Refoundation Party – Democratic Left Minor: Party of Italian Communists – Italy of Values – Federation of the Greens – UDEUR Populars – Italian Democratic Socialists – Italian Radicals Micro: Liberal Democrats – Democratic Union – Italian Democratic Socialist Party – United Consumers Regional: South Tyrolean People's Party – Trentino Tyrolean Autonomist Party – Valdotanian Renewal
House of Freedoms	Forza Italia – National Alliance – Union of Christian and Centre Democrats – Lega Nord Minor: The Right – Christian Democracy for the Autonomies – Movement for Autonomy – Pensioners' Party – Tricolour Flame – Social Action Micro: Italian Republican Party – Liberal Reformers – New Italian Socialist Party – Italians in the World Regional: Veneto for the EPP – Sardinian Reformers – Sardinian People's Party – Sardinian Democratic Union – New Sicily
Others	Micro: Italian Associations in South America – Socialist Party Regional: Valdotanian Union – Edelweiss Aosta Valley – Autonomist Federation – Union for South Tyrol – The Libertarians – North-East Project – Sardinian Action Party Complete list
- List of political parties - Politics of Italy

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