Ten years without the "star": on May 6, 2013, an icon of Italian politics died at the age of 94, Giulio Andreotti, born in 1919, perhaps one of the most powerful and representative men in the post-war country, as undersecretary to the Prime Minister in the De Gasperi governed at the age of just 27, until the end of the first Republic.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain and with the beginning of the dramatic series of mafia attacks and the coups of the "clean hands" pool of magistrates, a revolution began which led to the change of the consolidated political management schemes: the Christian Democrats reigned, the party-state that led with its leaders from the 60s onwards a five-party coalition together with socialists, liberals, republicans and social democrats.
Andreotti, until the Caf epilogue, which in the 1980s was the acronym of the very small command group formed by the Christian Democrat exponent, a disciple of De Gasperi, the PSI secretary Bettino Craxi and the then secretary of the White Whale Arnaldo Forlani, he was its most representative character.
He has participated in ten national general elections: he was the candidate with the highest number of preferences in Italy on four occasions.
In 1991 he was appointed senator for life by the President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga.
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Giulio Andreotti, life in images - Close-up
(HANDLE)
Seven times Prime Minister and thirty-four times Minister, also considering interim positions.
In an international framework characterized by the division of the world between the US-led West and the East under the aegis of the Soviet Union, the Christian Democrat leader, a staunch pro-European, has always hoped for a balance in relations between these two worlds: excellent relations with the United States but also with the nomenklatura of Moscow, constant attention to Middle Eastern problems, a strong and discreet presence in Gaddafi's Libya, a fruitful dialogue with the Vatican.
Rome, the places of Andreotti
Andreotti has always been a proponent of keeping the status quo between West and East so much so that he once said that Germany considered it so important that he always saw it double: one in the West and one in the East, the communist GDR, as an important piece equilibrium in the relations between the two blocks.
In the belief that only with this set-up, and perhaps history has proved him partly right, it was possible to guarantee, among other things, the long life of the political system that had been in force in Italy since the post-war period.
A political philosophy that the seven-time Prime Minister adopted, with lights and shadows, also in internal politics.
Always attentive to relations with the PCI.
Any important decision for the
Italy was somehow elaborated taking into account the expectations of an important part of the country that did not recognize itself in the DC and its system.
A policy that he himself defined in the 60s of the two ovens.
Corroborated by a strong presence in the area: in Ciociaria, in his constituency in southern Lazio, he was the undisputed champion of preferences.
A result achieved not only thanks to his personal prestige but also with his physical presence: almost every weekend, free from government and institutional commitments, he presented himself in his constituency participating in ceremonies of any kind, even at the inauguration of restaurants and shops , collecting an average of 300,000 preferences in the elections.
As prime minister he blamed the kidnapping of Moro by the Red Brigades, with subsequent accusations of having wanted,
together with Francesco Cossiga, the death of the Christian Democrat statesman.
But the management of relations with the Sicilian power system, where the Andreottian current had considerable weight within the DC, seems to have been one of the elements that ultimately contributed to tarnishing the character.
Paolo Sorrentino's film, entitled il Divo (hence the name) paints a chiaroscuro picture that the old DC leader has always rejected, even angrily, calling it a "rascal".
But in a context of general dissolution of the old political system, the mafia-style assassination of Salvo Lima, considered his lieutenant for many years in Sicily, the attacks on Falcone and Borsellino, were read in the political and journalistic world of the time as a signal that the
the air was changing and that the scheme of the "Divo" had come to an end.
So much so that in 1993, when the Palermo prosecutor's office asked Parliament for authorization to proceed against Giulio Andreotti, a newspaper headlined: "Now it's Beelzebub's turn" (this definition was coined by Bettino Craxi).
In fact, those listed in the Sicilian magistrates' dossier were very heavy and "diabolical" accusations, as someone commented: the senator was essentially accused of having entered into an "infamous pact" with the mafia.
«Now it's Beelzebub's turn» (this definition was coined by Bettino Craxi).
In fact, those listed in the Sicilian magistrates' dossier were very heavy and "diabolical" accusations, as someone commented: the senator was essentially accused of having entered into an "infamous pact" with the mafia.
«Now it's Beelzebub's turn» (this definition was coined by Bettino Craxi).
In fact, those listed in the Sicilian magistrates' dossier were very heavy and "diabolical" accusations, as someone commented: the senator was essentially accused of having entered into an "infamous pact" with the mafia.
Daughter Andreotti, I apprentice-archivist among his papers
In the system of "dangerous" relations reconstructed by the Palermo trial, a central role is assigned to Salvo Lima, head of what General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa defined in his diary as the "most polluted political family on the island".
Lima had joined the Andreotti current in 1968. According to the Palermo prosecutors, he would have brought a large package of membership cards as a dowry, making it from a small Lazio component to a national DC current.
A fact, that of dangerous liaisons, which the Christian Democrat leader rejected to the end asking and always wondering what were the objective elements that confirmed his relations with that system.
He was acquitted in the first instance by the Court of Palermo with a sentence of 23 October 1999. The Court of Appeal of Palermo,
with a sentence dated May 2, 2003, he declared the crimes prior to the spring of 1980 committed but prescribed, while the acquittal was confirmed for all subsequent events.
Finally, the Cassation confirmed the appeal sentence.
The memory of one of the absolute protagonists of twentieth-century Italian politics remains.