Umberto Bossi - Politics

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 during the summer of 1980, Bossi began focusing more on Lombardy. After two years, the autonomist Lega Lombarda 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, and set out to sweep away corruption and incompetence. Bossi himself, however, received an eight-month 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 also convicted many of the politicians he routinely attacked, such as Bettino Craxi, Arnaldo Forlani and others. Bossi's sentence was upheld on appeal.

In 1998, Bossi received a one-year suspended prison sentence for incitement of violence after he uttered the following sentence at a Lega Nord meeting: "We must hunt down these rascals, 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 being 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".

Bossi was critical of the European Union, and once described it as a "nest of communist bankers".

Bossi gave his last two sons unusual, politically charged names: "Roberto Libertà" (libertà means freedom, and it is a feminine noun in Italian) and "Eridano Sirio" (Eridano being the name of an ancient god of the Po river). The other son, Renzo, became the center of a controversy when, on May 2012, it was identified as the holder of a degree issued by a private Albanian university. Renzo Bossi apparently graduated university after only one year of attendance, instead of three. This notwithstanding the fact that previously it took to him three years to pass his high school maturity exam. He alleged that he "completed" all the exams in Albanian (a language he is not fluent in), and had not visited Albania even once (according to the Albanian border police system). Both Italian and Albanian prosecution offices investigated the case.