Northern League (Italy)
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Template:Infobox Italy Political Party
The Northern League (Italian: Lega Nord) is an Italian political party that advocates autonomy for a part of Northern Italy they call Padania (see the article for usage of the name). It is a personality-driven party led by Umberto Bossi.
The party had its first successes in the late eighties, when Umberto Bossi, elected at the Italian Senate, got his title of Senatùr, or senator in northern Italian dialect, a nickname he kept also when he no longer was a senator. The support for the party skyrocketed in the early nineties because of the huge political corruption scandal known as Tangentopoli and the Mani pulite investigations.
The league's culture is a mix of mistrust of southern Italians and especially of Roman authorities, often bordering on racism, xenophobia, elements of Reaganomics, independentism, hate for Italy and especially its flag, and claims of a Celtic heritage. The league has been often criticised, in Italy and abroad, for being too similar to a fascist party, having also organised a paramilitary group of "green shirts".
The Northern League is a merger of the various regional movements (often named "league"), including the Lombard League (Lega lombarda) and the League of Venice (Liga veneta). The movement was founded in 1989, and became part of a governing coalition for the first time in Silvio Berlusconi's government in 1994; the League was instrumental to its demise by the end of the year.
After having forced Berlusconi to resign, the Northern League attacked him vehemently for years, and Umberto Bossi said clearly in a television interview that Berlusconi's fortune came from illegal sources. In 1996 the movement announced that its aim was the independence of Northern Italy under the name Padania, a name referring to the Po River valley, but which the Northern League gave a geographically broader usage that has been steadily gaining currency, at least among its followers. The capital of Padania would be Mantua, and elections were organized by the party for a "northern parliament" (of course with no international recognition whatsoever).
In 2001 they re-joined forces with Berlusconi's coalition, previous disagreements notwithstanding. Some have claimed that Berlusconi loaned, through a company he controls, a large sum of money to help the League's finances, thereby buying their loyalty. The league is currently the most loyal party to Berlusconi's government, except of course Berlusconi's own. Today, they hold 30 of 630 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 17 of the 325 Senate seats.
In later years the League have deemphasised demands for independence, and focused rather on devolution, while remaining within the framework of Italy. In the European Parliament its MEPs work within the grouping Independence and Democracy.
See also
External links
- Lega Nord (http://www.leganord.org/) official site
- La Padania (http://www.lapadania.com/) official party organ (newspaper)
- Miss Padania (http://www.misspadania.com/) beauty pagent supported by Lega Nord
- Movimento Giovani Padani (http://www.giovanipadani.com/) Lega Nord's youth movementde:Lega Nord
fr:Ligue du Nord it:Lega Nord nl:Lega Nord ja:北部同盟 (イタリア) pl:Liga Północna fi:Lega Nord sv:Lega Nord