Politics
In 1979, Staller was presented as a candidate to the Italian Parliament by the Lista del Sole, Italy's first Green party. In 1985, she switched to the Partito Radicale, campaigning on a libertarian platform against nuclear energy and NATO membership, and for human rights.
She was elected to the Italian parliament in 1987, with approximately 20,000 votes. While in office, and before the outset of the Gulf War she offered to have sex with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in return for peace in the region. She was not re-elected at the end of her term in 1991.
In 1991, Staller was among the founders of another Italian political movement, called Partito dell'Amore ("Party of Love") and was spearheaded by friend and fellow porn star Moana Pozzi.
In January 2002, she began exploring the possibility of campaigning in Hungary, her country of birth, to represent Budapest's industrial Kőbánya district in the Hungarian parliament. However, she failed to collect enough petition signatures for a non-partisan candidacy. In the same year, she ran in local elections in Monza, Italy, promising to convert a prominent building into a gambling casino, but she attracted few votes. In 2004, she announced plans to run for mayor of Milan with a similar promise.
She renewed her offer to have sex with Saddam Hussein in October 2002, when Iraq was resisting international pressure to allow inspections for weapons of mass destruction, and in April 2006 made the same offer to Osama bin Laden.
In September 2011, it was revealed that Staller was eligible for and would be receiving a yearly pension of 39,000 Euros from the Italian state as a result of her five years in the country's parliament. Reacting to the controversy raised by the news, the former porn star, who started receiving the pension in November 2011, when she turned 60, stated: "I earned it and I'm proud of it."
Read more about this topic: Ilona Staller
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.”
—Peggy Noonan (b. 1950)
“I played by the rules of politics as I found them.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)