The People of Freedom


The People of Freedom was a centre-right political party in Italy. The PdL launched by Silvio Berlusconi as an electoral list, including Forza Italia and National Alliance, on 27 February for the 2008 Italian general election. The list was later transformed into a party during a party congress on 27–29 March 2009. The party's leading members included Angelino Alfano, Renato Schifani, Renato Brunetta, Roberto Formigoni, Maurizio Sacconi, Maurizio Gasparri, Mariastella Gelmini, Antonio Martino, Giancarlo Galan, Maurizio Lupi, Gaetano Quagliariello, Daniela Santanchè, Sandro Bondi, and Raffaele Fitto.
The PdL formed Italy's government from 2008 to 2011 in coalition with Lega Nord. After having supported Mario Monti's technocratic government in 2011–2012, the party was part of Enrico Letta's government with the Democratic Party, Civic Choice and the Union of the Centre. Alfano functioned as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior. In June 2013, Berlusconi announced Forza Italia's revival and the PdL's transformation into a centre-right coalition. On 16 November 2013, the PdL's national council voted to dissolve the party and start a new Forza Italia party; the assembly was deserted by a group of dissidents, led by Alfano, who had launched the New Centre-Right the day before.

History

Background

In the run-up to the 2006 Italian general election, there was talk among the House of Freedoms coalition's member parties on merging into a "united party of moderates and reformers". Forza Italia , National Alliance and the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats all seemed interested in the project. Soon after the election, however, UDC leader Pier Ferdinando Casini, who had been a reluctant coalition partner, started to distance from its historical allies. Another party of the coalition, Lega Nord, showed no interest in the idea, because of its character as a regionalist party.
On 2 December 2006, during a big rally of the centre-right in Rome against Romano Prodi's government, Silvio Berlusconi proposed the foundation of a "freedom party", stressing that centre-right voters were all part of a single "people of freedom". On 21 August 2007, Michela Brambilla, president of the Clubs of Freedom, registered the name and the symbol of the "Freedom Party" on Berlusconi's behalf, but none of Berlusconi's allies seemed interested in joining such a party and some leading FI dignitaries looked disappointed.

"Running board revolution"

On 18 November 2007, Berlusconi claimed that his supporters had collected over 7 million signatures on an appeal demanding the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, to call a fresh general election. Shortly afterwards, from the running board of a car in a crowded Piazza San Babila in Milan, he announced that FI would soon merge or transform into a new "party of the Italian people". The new course was thus called the "running board revolution" and this expression soon became very popular both among Berlusconi's supporters and his adversaries.
At the beginning, the fate of FI remained unclear. Later, it was explained that the new party's core would consist of FI, the Clubs of Freedom and other grassroots groups, and that some minor parties of the House of Freedoms would join too. AN leader Gianfranco Fini made very critical statements in the days after Berlusconi's announcement, declaring the end of his support for Berlusconi as candidate for Prime Minister and that his party would not join the new party. Also UDC leader Casini criticised the idea from the start and seemed interested in an alternative coalition with Fini.

Foundation and early years

On 24 January, the Prodi II Cabinet fell as a result of the 2008 Italian political crisis, paving the way for a new general election. The day after Berlusconi hinted that FI would probably contest its last election, and postponed the foundation of the new party until after the election. In an atmosphere of reconciliation with Fini, Berlusconi also stated that the new party could involve the participation of other parties. On 8 February, Berlusconi and Fini agreed to form a joint list under the banner of The People of Freedom, in alliance with LN.
In addition to Forza Italia and the National Alliance, several minor parties and groups chose to join the PdL: the Clubs of Freedom of Michela Vittoria Brambilla, the Clubs of Good Government of Marcello Dell'Utri, the Liberal Populars of Carlo Giovanardi, the Christian Democracy for Autonomies of Gianfranco Rotondi, the Pensioners' Party of Carlo Fatuzzo, Liberal Reformers of Benedetto Della Vedova, the Italian Republican Party of Francesco Nucara, the New Italian Socialist Party of Stefano Caldoro, the Liberal Democrats of Daniela Melchiorre, Decide! of Daniele Capezzone, Italians in the World of Sergio De Gregorio, Social Action of Alessandra Mussolini, the Libertarian Right of Luciano Buonocore and the Reformist Socialists of Donato Robilotta.
In the 2008 Italian general election, the PdL won 37.4% of the vote, getting elected 276 deputies and 146 senators and becoming the Italian largest party. The PdL was also the first party since Christian Democracy in the 1979 Italian general election to get more than 35% of the popular vote.
On 27–29 March 2009, the new party held its first congress in Rome and was officially founded. Berlusconi was elected president, while Sandro Bondi, Ignazio La Russa and Denis Verdini were appointed national coordinators, Maurizio Lupi organizational secretary and Daniele Capezzone spokesperson.
In the 2009 European Parliament election in Italy, the party won 35.2% of the national vote, returning 29 MEPs.
In the big round of regional elections of 2010, the PdL retained Lombardy with Roberto Formigoni, gained Lazio with Renata Polverini, Campania with Stefano Caldoro and Calabria with Giuseppe Scopelliti. The PdL was also instrumental in the centre-right victories in Veneto and Piedmont, where two presidents of LN, Luca Zaia and Roberto Cota respectively, were elected.

Berlusconi vs. Fini

Between 2009 and 2010, Gianfranco Fini, former leader of the conservative AN and president of the Chamber of Deputies, became a vocal critic of the leadership of Berlusconi. Fini departed from party's majority line on stem cell research, end-of-life care, advance health care directive, and immigration, and he was a proponent of a more structured party organisation. His criticism was aimed at the leadership style of Berlusconi, who tended to rely on his personal charisma to lead the party from the centre, and supported a lighter form of party, which in his mind was to be a movement-party active only at election times, as the original FI and on some respects that of political parties in the United States.
Although some Finiani, such as Italo Bocchino, Carmelo Briguglio and Fabio Granata, shared Fini's views on moral issues and immigration, many others, including Andrea Ronchi and Adolfo Urso, were traditionalist. In fact most Finiani were Southern conservatives who opposed Berlusconi's firm alliance with LN, federal reform and Giulio Tremonti's economic policy. Fini made inroads among the liberal and centrist ranks of the former FI, but he lost the support of most leading members of the former AN, notably including Ignazio La Russa, Maurizio Gasparri and Altero Matteoli, who became close allies of Berlusconi. Others, including Gianni Alemanno and Alfredo Mantovano, found common ground with the party's Christian democrats.
On 15 April 2010, Bocchino launched an association named Generation Italy to better represent Fini's views within the party. Five days later 52 MPs signed a document in support of Fini and his theses, while other 74 MPs former members of AN, including La Russa, Gasparri, Matteoli and Giorgia Meloni, plus Alemanno, mayor of Rome, signed an alternative document in which they reasserted their loyalty to the party and Berlusconi. On 22 April 2010, the national council of the PdL convened in Rome for the first time in a year. The conflict between Fini and Berlusconi was covered live on television. At the end of the day a resolution proposed by Berlusconi's loyalists was put before the assembly and approved almost unanimously.
Following then, clashes between Fini and Berlusconi became even more frequent and reached their height in late July, when Fini questioned the morality of some party bigwigs under investigation. On 29 July 2010, the executive committee released a document in which Fini was described as "incompatible" with the political line of the PdL and unable to perform his job of President of the Chamber of Deputies in a neutral way. Berlusconi asked Fini to step down and the executive proposed the suspension from party membership of Bocchino, Briguglio and Granata, who had harshly criticised Berlusconi and accused some party members of criminal offences. As response, Fini and his followers formed their own groups in both chambers under the name of Future and Freedom.
It was soon clear that FLI would leave the PdL and become an independent party. On 7 November, during a convention in Bastia Umbra, Fini asked Berlusconi to step down as Prime Minister and proposed a new government including the Union of the Centre. A few days later, the four FLI members in the government resigned. On 14 December FLI voted against Berlusconi in a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies, a vote won by Berlusconi by 314 to 311.

Re-organisation and discontents

In May 2011 the party suffered a big blow in local elections. Particularly painful was the loss of Milan, Berlusconi's hometown and party stronghold, where the outgoing PdL mayor Letizia Moratti was defeated by Giuliano Pisapia, a left-wing independent close to Nichi Vendola's Left Ecology Freedom party.
In response to this and to crescent fibrillation within party ranks, Angelino Alfano, then minister of Justice, was chosen as national secretary in charge of re-organising and renewing the party. The appointment of 40-year-old Alfano, a former Christian Democrat who had later been leader of FI in Sicily, was unanimously approved by the party executive. However, economy minister Giulio Tremonti expressed his concerns that the nominee would "make us lose votes in the North". On 1 July the national council modified the party's constitution and Alfano was elected secretary with little opposition.
Alfano led the party through a huge membership drive and, on 1 November, announced that more than one million individuals had joined the party. He also drove the party in a Christian-democratic direction. The factions which benefited most from the effort were those of Roberto Formigoni, Ignazio La Russa and Franco Frattini. The Christian-democratization of the party and the perceived marginalisation of liberals and social democrats led some to leave the party. One of these, Carlo Vizzini, declared: "It seems to me that the PdL is set to become the Italian section of the European People's Party . I come from another tradition: I have been secretary of the PSDI and I was one of the founders of the Party of European Socialists. When I joined Forza Italia there were Liberals, Socialists, Radicals. Now everything has changed."
In the midst of the European sovereign debt crisis, on 14 October, following calls by Claudio Scajola and Giuseppe Pisanu for a new government, two deputies close to Scajola, Giustina Destro and Fabio Gava, voted against Berlusconi during a vote of confidence and left the party altogether. On 2 November, Destro and Gava, along with Roberto Antonione, Giorgio Stracquadanio, Isabella Bertolini and Giancarlo Pittelli, promoted an open letter in which they asked Berlusconi to step down. Contextually, Antonione announced that he was leaving the party. In the following days three more deputies, Alessio Bonciani, Ida D'Ippolito and Gabriella Carlucci, left to join the UdC. In three months, the PdL had lost 15 deputies and 4 senators, including the 7 deputies and 3 senators who launched Force of the South under Gianfranco Micciché.