Umberto Bossi
Umberto Bossi (born September 19, 1941 in Cassano Magnago) is an Italian politician, and leader of the Northern League, a party seeking autonomy or independence for northern Italy. He is married to Manuela Marrone and has four sons (of which one from his first wife). Even if his party is often perceived as hostile towards Southern Italy, he is married to a southern Italian himself.
Education
Umberto Bossi has finished scientific high school (liceo scientifico). He later began studying medicine at the University of Pavia, but did not finish. Some claim he only completed five exams in six years, others that he dropped out shortly before finishing. A rumour that has not been countered by Bossi is that he gave a fake graduation party, allegedly to convince his mother he had graduated.
In any case, it was at the university of Pavia, in February 1979, that he met Bruno Salvadori, leader of the Valdotanian Union, who introduced him to autonomism. It is in this period that Bossi becomes politically active.
Politics
- See also: Ideology of the Northern League
Before becoming a politician, Bossi was a sympathiser of the Italian Communist Party in his early years. After the death of Salvadori in a car accident in the summer of 1980, Bossi began focusing more on Lombardy. After two years, the Lombard autonomist league is born. It is at this time that Bossi meets his second wife, Manuela Marrone, then a teacher with an interest in local dialects, who hosted the league's headquarters in her flat.
The Lega Lombarda would later seek alliances with similar movements in Veneto and Piedmont, forming the Northern League, of which he still is the federal secretary. He became the undisputed and unchallenged leader of the party, a position that he has maintained to this day, even after a serious stroke.
When the scandals of Tangentopoli were unveiled from 1992 on, Bossi rode the wave, presenting himself as the new man in politics, set out to sweep away corruption and incompetence. Bossi himself, hovewer, was sentenced to 8 months in prison, along with Lega Nord's treasurer at the time of the events Alessandro Patelli, for receiving a 200-million lire bribe in a trial that sentenced also many of the politicians he routinely attacked, as Bettino Craxi, Arnaldo Forlani and others.
A Peculiar Style
He is often described as a racist (against immigrants and southern Italians), low-cultured maverick. His politics has been compared by critics to that of the Austrian nationalist leader, Jörg Haider, whose extreme right-wing opinions and political agenda concerned Europe in the same years of Bossi's popularity peak. His supporters appreciate the his easily comprehensible speeches, despised by many as they often contain blatant insults, references to unlikely conspiracy theories, and gestures difficult to misunderstand.
Above all of Bossi's expressions, one is especially remembered: "La Lega ce l'ha duro!" ("The Lega's got a boner!"), uttered in front of a large public of supporters gathered at a meeting in Pontida in the early years of Lega's success. The phrase sounds quite awkward in Italian, as "Lega" is actually a female-gender word. The expression gave birth to the Italian neologism celodurismo, "bonerism", indicating populistic and demagogic politics appealing to the lowest instincts of electors.
Speaking to a public in Venice, and seeing that a woman had a put an Italian flag on her terrace to silently protest against the Lega Nord, he shouted in the microphone, while delivering his speech and in front of national TV, "Madam, hang that flag in the toilet!" (using the harsh Italian word cesso). For this, he was later prosecuted for insulting the flag.
Bossi named his two last sons with unusual, politically-charged names, Roberto Libertà (libertà means freedom, and it is a female noun in Italian) and Eridano Sirio (Eridano would be the name of an ancient god of the Po river).
Institutional Experience
Bossi became his institutional career in 1987 as the only senator of the Lombard League, of which he was the leader. He was then given the nickname senatür, senator in dialect, which stuck even when he was later elected as a MP in the Italian Chamber of Deputies.
He was instrumental in the unexpected victory of Silvio Berlusconi's coalition in 1994, but he broke the alliance after just a few months, with the first Berlusconi cabinet collapsing before Christmas 1994.
He later attacked repeatedly Berlusconi with impressive verbal violence, using much of his rethorics: Berlus-kaiser, Berluscazz ("Berlus-penis"); he also threatened mining the antennas that spread the signals of Berlusconi's televisions, a threat that a few extremist followers took seriously, carrying out some minor sabotage actions; these never compromised Berlusconi's TVs, however, and were mostly a curiosity in the news.
After a subsidiary of the Berlusconi empire granted a loan to relieve the waning finances of Lega Nord, Bossi agreed to return to an alliance with Berlusconi, which ultimately led to the (this time, easily predicted) 2001 electoral victory.
He then served in Silvio Berlusconi's second cabinet as Reforms Minister, but, after suffering a serious stroke on March 11, 2004, which seriously impaired his speech, quit on July 19, 2004 to take up a seat as a member of the European Parliament. He is now slowly returning to active politics.
External link
Official biography from the Web site of Lega Nord.- The League, Bossi and what comes after, biography of Bossi and storyline of the League by the conservative magazine Ideazione.
- Padanian poker's last hand, biography by the left-wing newspaper L'Unità.
