Francesco Cossiga

Senatore Francesco Cossiga
File:Francesco Cossiga2.jpg
VIII President of the Italian Republic
In office June 29, 1985 – April 28, 1992
Prime Minister	Bettino Craxi Amintore Fanfani Giovanni Goria Ciriaco De Mita Giulio Andreotti
Preceded by	Himself acting Alessandro Pertini
Succeeded by	Giovanni Spadolini acting Oscar Luigi Scalfaro
62nd Prime Minister of Italy
In office 4 August 1979 – 18 October 1980
President	Alessandro Pertini
Preceded by	Giulio Andreotti
Succeeded by	Arnaldo Forlani
President of the Italian Senate Acting President of the Republic from June 29, 1985 to July 3, 1985
In office July 12, 1983 – July 3, 1985
Preceded by	Vittorino Colombo
Succeeded by	Amintore Fanfani
Italian Minister of the Interior
In office July 29, 1976 – May 11, 1978
Prime Minister	Giulio Andreotti
Preceded by	Aldo Moro
Succeeded by	Giulio Andreotti
Lifetime Senator
Incumbent
Assumed office April 28, 1992
Constituency	New Constituency
Personal details
Born	(1928-07-26) July 26, 1928 Sassari, Sardinia, Italy
Political party	Christian Democracy
Spouse	Giuseppa Sigurani

Francesco Cossiga (born July 26, 1928) is an Italian politician and former President of the Italian Republic. He was also a professor of law at University of Sassari.

Early career

Cossiga was born in Sassari in the north of Sardinia. He started his political career during World War II in groups of Catholic reference. He is commonly called IPA: [kosˈsiːga], but actually the original pronunciation of his surname is [ˈkɔsːiga], with the stress on the first syllable, which means "Corsica". He is the cousin of Enrico Berlinguer.

He has been several times a minister for Democrazia Cristiana (DC); notably during his stay at Viminale (Ministry for internal affairs) he re-structured Italian police, civil protection and secret services organisations. He was in charge during the kidnapping and murdering of Aldo Moro by Red Brigades and resigned when Moro was found dead in 1978.

Election as President of Italian Senate of Republic

During the ninth republican legislature, he was elected President of Italian Senate 12th of July 1983 and he was until 24th of June 1985, when he became President of Italian Republic

Election as President of Italy

Resigning from his post, he earned the respect of the opposition (in particular of the Italian Communist Party) because he appeared as the only member of the government who took responsibility for the tragic conclusion of the events. This led to his election in 1985 as President of the Republic (Head of State), in which for the first time ever a candidate won at the first ballot (where a majority of over ⅔ is necessary, which would subsequently decrease in later ballots). The only other president of the Italian Republic elected at the first ballot was Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in 1999.

The Cossiga Presidency

Cossiga's presidency was unremarkable for its first five years, as most presidents until then refrained entering the open political debate in order to remain figures of reference for the whole nation.

However, in his last two years as a President, Cossiga began to express opinions, at times virulent, against the Italian political system. In his opinion, Italian parties, and especially DC and PCI, had to take into account the deep change that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War would have brought.

These declarations, soon dubbed "esternazioni", or "mattock blows" (picconate), were considered by many inappropriate for a President. Cossiga declared he was just "taking pleasure in removing some sand from my shoes". Cossiga was supported by the secretary of the Italian Socialist Party, Bettino Craxi.

A strong tension with the President of the Council of Ministers Giulio Andreotti emerged when Andreotti revealed the existence of Gladio, a Stay-behind organization with the official aim of countering a possible Soviet invasion through sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. Cossiga declared his involvement in the setup of the organization. The Communist party started a procedure for impeachment (Presidents of Italy can be impeached only for high treason against the State or Attempt against the Constitution). The request of impeachment was subsequently withdrawn.

Cossiga resigned two months before the end of his term, on April 28 1992. He was voted again for president by the Italian Social Movement, that had supported him in his campaigns.

Life senator

After his resignation from Quirinale (the Roman hill in which is the office of the Head of State), he is a lifetime senator, like all the former Presidents of the Republic, since 1992. His current title is President Emeritus of the Italian Republic.

In February 1998 Cossiga created the UDR party (Unione Democratica per la Repubblica), declarately a centrist political formation. The UDR was a crucial component of the majority that supported the D'Alema government in October 1998, after the fall of the Prodi government which lost a confidence vote.

Cossiga declared that his support for D'Alema was meant to end the conventional exclusion of the former Communist Party (PCI) leaders from the premiership in Italy.

In 1999 UDR was dissolved. Cossiga returned to his senator for life activity, with a prominent interest in security matters, as his parliamentary record shows (see [1]).

He remains a vocal commentator of Italian politics.

On 27 November 2006, he resigned from his position as lifetime senator. His resignation was however rejected on 31 January 2007 by a vote of the Senate.

Province of Bolzano-Bozen independence controversy

In June 2006 he brought in a bill that would allow the autonomous province of Bolzano-Bozen to hold a referendum, where voters could decide whether to stay with Italy, return to Austria, or become fully independent [2]. The proposed bill was immediately rejected in the Italian parliament, and also the South Tyrolean People's Party (SVP) rejected the proposal, saying this would just create ethnic tensions again.

Controversial 9/11 comments

On 30 November 2007 he stated in an interview with the respected Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera his doubts about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York. The following is a rough translation of part of the interview:

From circles around Palazzo Chigi, nerve centre of direction of Italian intelligence, it is noted that the non-authenticity of the video is testified from the fact that Osama bin Laden in it 'confessed' that Al Qaeda would have been the author of the attack of the 11 September to the Twin Towers in New York, while all of the democratic circles of America and of Europe, with in the forefront those of the Italian centre-left, now know well that the disastrous attack was planned and realized by the American CIA and Mossad with the help of the Zionist world to put under accusation the Arabic Countries and to persuade the Western powers to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan. For this, no word of solidarity arrived to Silvio Berlusconi, who has been the author of the brilliant falsification, neither from the Quirinale, nor from Palazzo Chigi, nor from representatives of the centre-left!

References

• "Le confessioni di Cossiga: 'Io, Gelli e la massoneria'". La Repubblica . October 11, 2003. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) (on links between Cossiga, Licio Gelli and Propaganda Due masonic lodge; Massera, part of Videla's junta in Argentina, is also named)