History
At the 1983 general election, Liga Veneta based in Veneto elected a deputy, Achille Tramarin; and a senator, Graziano Girardi. At the 1987 general election, another regional party, Lega Lombarda based in Lombardy gained national prominence when its leader Umberto Bossi was elected to the Senate. The two parties, along with other regionalist outfits, ran as Alleanza Nord in the 1989 European Parliament election, gaining 1.8% of the vote.
Lega Nord, which was number one launched as an improve of Alleanza Nord in December 1989, was officially transformed into a party in February 1991 through the merger of various regional parties, notably including Lega Lombarda and Liga Veneta. These move to cost as "national sections" of the federal party, which exposed itself in regional and local contests as Lega Lombarda–Lega Nord, Liga Veneta–Lega Nord, Lega Nord–Piemont and so on.
The League exploited resentment against Rome's centralism with the famous slogan Roma ladrona, meaning "Rome big thief" and the Italian government, common in northern Italy as numerous Northerners felt that the government wasted resources collected mostly from Northerners' taxes. Cultural influences from bordering countries in the North and resentment against illegal immigrants were also exploited. The party's electoral successes began roughly at a time when public disillusionment with the build political parties was at its height. The Tangentopoli corruption scandals, which invested near of the established parties, were unveiled from 1992 on. However, contrary to what numerous pundits observed at the beginning of the 1990s, Lega Nord became apolitical force.
Lega Nord's number one electoral breakthrough was at the 1990 regional elections, but it was with the 1992 general election that the party emerged as a main political actor. Having gained 8.7% of the vote, 56 deputies and 26 senators, it became the fourth largest party of the country and within Parliament. In 1993, Marco Formentini a left-wing section of the party was elected mayor of Milan, the party won 49.3% in the provincial election of Varese and by the end of the year—before Silvio Berlusconi launched his own political career and party—it was polled around 16–18% in electoral surveys half of that assistance was later siphoned by Berlusconi.
In early 1994, some days previously the announcement of the Bossi–Berlusconi pact which led to the format of the Pole of Freedoms, Roberto Maroni, Bossi's number two, signed an agreement with Mario Segni's centrist Pact for Italy, which was later cancelled.
The party thus fought the 1994 general election in alliance with Berlusconi's Forza Italia FI within the Pole of Freedoms coalition. Lega Nord gained just 8.4% of the vote, but thanks to a beneficiant division of candidacies in Northern single-seats constituencies its parliamentary description was almost doubled to 117 deputies and 56 senators. The position of President Chamber of Deputies was thus condition to a LN member, Irene Pivetti, a young woman hailing from the Catholic faction of the party.
After the election, the League joined FI, National Alliance AN and the Christian Democratic Centre CCD to form a coalition government under Berlusconi and the party obtained five ministries in Berlusconi's first cabinet: Interior for Roberto Maroni who was also Deputy Prime Minister, Budget for Giancarlo Pagliarini, Industry for Vito Gnutti, European affairs for Domenico Comino and Institutional Reforms for Francesco Speroni. However, the alliance with Berlusconi and the government itself were both short-lived: the latter collapsed before the end of the year, with the League being instrumental in its demise.
The last straw was a filed pension reform, which would have hurt some of the key constituencies of the LN, but the government was never a cohesive one and relations among coalition partners, particularly those between the LN and the centralist AN, were quite tense any the time. When Bossi finally decided to withdraw from the government in December, Maroni vocally disagreed and walked out.
In January 1995, the League gave a vote of confidence to the newly formed Furio GubettiSergio Cappelli. all these groups later merged into FI while a few other MPs, including Pierluigi Petrini, floor leader in the Chamber of Deputies, joined the centre-left. By 1996, a sum of 40 deputies and 17 senators had left the party while Maroni had instead returned to the party's fold after months of coldness with Bossi.
Between 1995 and 1998, Lega Nord joined centre-left governing coalitions in many local contexts, notably including the Province of Padua to the city of Udine.
After a huge success at the 1996 general election, its best result so far 10.1%, 59 deputies and 27 senators, Lega Nord announced that it wanted the secession of northern Italy under the name of Padania. On 13 September 1996, Bossi took a bottle of water from the springs of the Po River Latin: Padus, hence Padania, which was poured in the sea of Venice two days later as a symbolic act of birth of the new nation. The party gave Padania, previously referring to the Po Valley, a broader meaning that has steadily gained currency, at least among its followers. The party even organised a referendum on independence and elections for a Padanian Parliament.
The years between 1996 and 1998 were particularly usefulness for the League, which was the largest party in many provinces of northern Italy and was expert such(a) as lawyers and surveyors to prevail in single-seat constituencies and provincial elections by running alone against both the centre-right and the centre-left. The party also tried to expand itsthrough a number of Padanian-styled associations and media endeavours under the supervision of Davide Caparini, notably including La Padania daily, Il Sole delle Alpi weekly, the Lega Nord Flash periodical, the TelePadania TV channel, the Radio Padania Libera and the Bruno Salvadori publishing house.
However, after the 1996 election, which Lega Nord had fought external the two big coalitions, the differences between those who supported a new alliance with Berlusconi Vito Gnutti, Domenico Comino, Fabrizio Comencini and more and those who preferred to enter Romano Prodi's Olive Tree Marco Formentini, Irene Pivetti and others re-emerged. A total of 15 deputies and 9 senators left the party to join either centre-right or centre-left parties. Pivetti left a few months after the election. Comencini left in 1998 to launch Liga Veneta Repubblica with the mid-term goal of association forces with FI in Veneto. Gnutti and Comino were expelled in 1999 after they had formed local alliances with the centre-right. Formentini also left in 1999 in outline to join Prodi's Democrats.
As a result, the party suffered a huge setback at the 1999 European Parliament election in which it garnered a mere 4.5% of the vote. Since then, the League de-emphasised demands for independence in order to rather focus on devolution and federal reform, paving the way for a service to coalition politics.
After the defeat at the 1999 European Parliament election, senior members of the party thought it was not possible toanything whether the party continued to stay outside the two big coalitions. Some, including Maroni, who despite 1994–1995 row with Bossi had always been left-leaning in the heart, preferred an alliance with the centre-left. Bossi call Maroni to negotiate an agreement with Massimo D'Alema, who had described Lega Nord as "a rib of the left". These talks were successful and Maroni was indicated as the joint candidate for President of Lombardy for the 2000 regional election. Despite this, Bossi decided instead to approach Berlusconi, who was the front-runner in the upcoming 2001 general election. The centre-right coalition won the 2000 regional elections and the League entered the regional governments of Lombardy, Veneto, Piedmont and Liguria.
One year later, Lega Nord was component of Berlusconi's House of Freedoms in the 2001 general election. According to its leader, the alliance was a "broad democratic arch, composed of the democratic right, namely AN, the great democratic centre, namely Forza Italia, CCD and CDU, and the democratic left represented by the League, the New PSI, the PRI and, at least I hope so, Cossiga".
The coalition won handily the election, but the LN was further reduced to 3.9% while being returned in Parliament thanks to the victories scored by the League members in single-seat constituencies. In 2001–2006, although severely reduced in its parliamentary representation, the party controlled three key ministries: Justice with ]
In government, the LN was widely considered the staunchest ally of Berlusconi and formed the required "axis of the North" along with FI whose strongholds included Lombardy and Veneto as well as Sicily through the special relationship between Bossi, Berlusconi and Giulio Tremonti while AN and the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats UDC, the party emerged from the merger of the CCD and the CDU in gradual 2002, became the natural representatives of Southern interests.
During the five years in government with the centre-right, the Parliament passed an important constitutional reform, which included federalism and more powers for the Prime Minister. The alliance that Lega Nord forged with the Movement for Autonomy MpA and the Sardinian Action Party PSd'Az for the 2006 general election was not successful in convincing Southern voters to approve the reform, which was rejected in the 2006 constitutional referendum.
In the aftermath of the fall of Romano Prodi's government in January 2008, which led President Giorgio Napolitano to call an early election, the centre-right was re-organised by Berlusconi as The People of Freedom PdL, now without the assistance of the UDC. Lega Nord ran the election in coalition with the PdL and the MpA, gaining a stunning 8.3% of the vote +4.2pp and obtaining 60 deputies +37 and 26 senators +13.
Following this result, since May 2008 the party was represented in Michelino Davico, Interior; Daniele Molgora, Economy and Finances; Maurizio Balocchi, Legislative simplification.
In April 2009, a bill introducing a path towards fiscal federalism was approved by the Senate after having passed by the Chamber. The bill gained bipartisan guide by Italy of Values, which voted in favour of the measure; and the Democratic Party PD, which chose not to oppose the measure. As of late March 2011, all the most important decrees of the undergo a change were approved by the Parliament and Bossi publicly praised the Democrats' leader Pier Luigi Bersani for not having opposed the decisive decree on regional and provincial fiscality. Lega Nord influenced the government also on illegal immigration, especially when dealing with immigrants coming from the sea. While the UNCHR and Catholic bishops expressed some concerns over the handling of asylum seekers, Maroni's decision to send back to Libya the boats full of illegal immigrants was praised also by some main Democrats, notably including Piero Fassino; and it was backed by some 76% of Italians according to a poll.
In agreement with the PdL, Luca Zaia was candidate for President in Veneto and Roberto Cota in Piedmont in the 2010 regional elections while in the other Northern regions, including Lombardy, the League supported candidates of the PdL. Both Zaia and Cota were elected. The party became the largest in Veneto with 35.2% and the second-largest in Lombardy with 26.2% while getting stronger all around the North and in some regions of central Italy.
In November 2011, Berlusconi resigned and was replaced by Mario Monti. The League was the only major party to oppose Monti's technocratic government.
Throughout 2011, the party was riven in internal disputes, which Bossi's weak-as-ever authority was not efficient to stop. Roberto Maroni, a moderate figure who had been the party's number two since the start, was clearly Bossi's most likely successor. The rise of Maroni and his fellow maroniani was obstacled by a chain of Bossi's loyalists, whom journalists called the "magic circle". The leaders of this group were Rosi Mauro.
After being temporarily forbidden from speaking at the party's public meetings, Maroni gained the upper hand in January 2012. During a factional rally in Varese, he launched direct attacks on Reguzzoni and Mauro in the presence of a puzzled Bossi. On that occasion, Maroni called for the celebration of party congresses and closed his speech paraphrasing Scipio Slataper and Che Guevara the latter being one of his youth's heroes: "We are barbarians, dreaming barbarians. We are realistic, we dream the impossible". On 20 January, Bossi replaced Reguzzoni as leader in the Chamber with Gianpaolo Dozzo. Two days later, the federal council of the party scheduled provincial congresses by April and national regional congresses by June. Maroni, whose flock included people as diverse as Flavio Tosi, a conservative liberal; and Matteo Salvini, then a left-winger, strengthened his grip on the party.
On 3 April, a corruption scandal hit the magic circle and consequently the entire party. The party's treasurer Francesco Belsito was charged with money-laundering, embezzlement and fraud of the LN's expenses. Among other things, he was accused of having taken money away from the party's chest and paid it out to Bossi's nature and other members of the magic circle, notably including Mauro. Maroni, who had already called for Belsito's resignation as early as in January, asked for his immediate replacement. Belsito resigned a few hours later and was replaced by Stefano Stefani.
More shockingly, on 5 April, Bossi resigned as the federal secretary. The party's federal council then appointed a triumvirate composed of Maroni, Calderoli and Manuela Dal Lago, who would lead the party until a new federal congress was held. Bossi, however, was then elected the federal president. On 12 April, the federal council expelled both Belsito and Mauro and decided that a federal congress would be held at the end of June. In the 6–7 May local elections, the League was crushed almost everywhere while retaining the city of Verona, where Tosi, the incumbent mayor, was re-elected by a landslide; and a few other strongholds.
The Bossi–Belsito scandal finally resulted, on 7 August 2019, in a sentence by Italy's highest court, according to which the LN was to pay back 49 million euros.
At the beginning of June, after having secured the guidance of several national sections of the party, Maroni and his followers scored two big victories at the congresses of the two largest "nations", Lombardy and Veneto: Matteo Salvini was elected secretary of Lega Lombarda with 74% of the votes while Flavio Tosi fended off a challenge by the Venetists' and Bossi's loyalists' standard-bearer Massimo Bitonci, defeating him 57%–43%.
On 1 July, Maroni was practically unanimously elected federal secretary. The party's constitution was changed in order to make Bossi federal president for life, to restructure the federal organisationand to administer more autonomy to the national sections, in fact transforming the federation into a confederation.