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See also: Ideology of the Northern League CLICK HERE
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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 during the summer of 1980, Bossi began focusing more on Lombardy. After two years, the Lombard autonomist league was born. In that period Bossi met his second wife, Manuela Marrone.
The Lega Lombarda would later seek alliances with similar movements in Veneto and Piedmont, forming the Northern League, of which he is still 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, however, received an eight months suspended prison sentence, 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.[2] Bossi's sentence was upheld in appeals.[3]
In 1998, Bossi received a one-year suspended prison sentence for the incitement of violence after he uttered the following sentence at a Lega Nord meeting: "We must hunt down these rascals (neo-fascists), and if they take votes from us, then let's comb the area house by house, because we kicked the fascists out of here once before after the war."
While the Reforms minister in 2003 Bossi ordered the Navy to fire live rounds on boats holding illegal immigrants, stating "After the second or third warning, bang... we fire the cannon".
View the rest of the entry on Wiki CLICK HERE
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In What Way Does EFD membership Pay UKIP?
Well I guess the extra expenses scams con enrich the leadership!
Berlusconi Feels The Heat (Again)
To view the original of this article CLICK HEREAs we mentioned in our previous post, yesterday Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had to face some serious pressure from Merkel and Sarkozy. In a desperate attempt to save face, Berlusconi has just released a communiqué claiming that "no one in the EU...can lecture his partners". However, it's no secret that his French and German counterparts literally gave him three days to come up with a concrete set of reforms to enhance growth - to present at Wednesday's EU summit.
Il Cavaliere had a particularly bad EU summit yesterday, but once back in Rome, it got even worse as Berlusconi was forced to call an emergency cabinet meeting for this evening and announced a plan to raise retirement age by two years, to 67. This idea drew an immediate rebuke from junior coalition partner Lega Nord, which claims it has already made important concessions, on issues such as private sector female workers' pensions, to save Berlusconi's skin.
So, for the umpteenth time, will this be the end for Silvio? Lega Nord Senator Rosi Mauro said this morning that her party was ready to "take to the streets", should the Italian government decide to push ahead with its pensions reform plan. But most importantly, the emergency cabinet meeting (initially scheduled for 5 pm London time) has kicked off more than one hour later, because Berlusconi was stuck in a meeting with Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti and Lega Nord leader Umberto Bossi (see picture). At that meeting, the latter reportedly threatened to walk out of government, should Berlusconi not drop his plan to increase the retirement age.
In most democratic countries, this would be a pretty hopeless situation for a coalition government. However, as has been made clear time and again (see here and here), the Italian Prime Minister is a man full of surprises. And in fact, two opposition parties have already hinted that they could support the proposed pensions reform (although one of the parties has made clear that Berlusconi would have to resign one minute after the reform is passed)...
P.S.: Meanwhile, Le Monde reports that, behind closed doors, eurozone officials are studying the possibility to activate the eurozone's bailout fund, the EFSF, to take over from the ECB the responsibility of purchasing Italian bonds. The Commission has already denied the reports, meaning that they might well be true...
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