Clemente Mastella

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Clemente Mastella (2005)

Mario Clemente Mastella (born February 5, 1947 in Ceppaloni , Benevento province ) is an Italian politician . From 1999 to 2013 he led the Popolari - Unione Democratici per l'Europa (UDEUR) party. From 1994 to 1995 he was Minister of Labor in the first government of Silvio Berlusconi and from 2006 to 2008 Minister of Justice in the second government of Prodi and also a senator . 1999–2004 and 2009–14 he was a member of the European Parliament . Since 2016 he has been mayor of the city of Benevento in Campania.

Life

Political career until 2005

Mastella in 1994

Mastella initially worked as a journalist at the RAI and was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies for the first time in 1976 for the Democrazia Cristiana (DC) . In addition, he was mayor of his home town of Ceppaloni from 1986 to 1992 .

In 1994, after the dissolution of the DC, he was one of the founders of the successor party Centro Cristiano Democratico (CCD), whose leadership he shared with Pier Ferdinando Casini . As part of the center-right alliance Polo delle Libertà around Berlusconi, the CCD entered the government after the 1994 election victory and Mastella was Minister of Labor from May 10, 1994 to January 17, 1995.

Following a call by former President Francesco Cossiga to form a strong political center - as an alternative to the two rival camps - Mastella founded the Cristiano Democratici per la Repubblica (CDR) in March 1998 , which three months later became Cossiga's Unione Democratica per la Repubblica ( UDR). Mastella was secretary of the UDR, which broke up again in February 1999, after which he emerged in May 1999 the Unione Democratici per l'Europa (UDEUR; later Popolari UDEUR ). The new party won a mandate in the European elections in June 1999 . Mastella was then a member of the European Parliament until 2004 , where he sat in the Christian Democratic group EPP-ED . At the national level, the Christian Democratic splinter party under Mastella's leadership supported the center-left government of Massimo D'Alema despite its centrist orientation .

From 2003 to 2008 he was again mayor of Ceppaloni. In 2005, UDEUR joined the center-left electoral alliance L'Unione . In October 2005 Mastella stepped in the primaries ( primarie ) around the top candidate of the Unione for the office of Italian Prime Minister, but lost 4.6% of the vote clearly its competitor Romano Prodi .

Justice Minister, Corruption Scandal and Government Crisis (2006-08)

Mastella was elected to the Italian Senate in April 2006 and joined Prodi's new government coalition as Minister of Justice on May 17, 2006. In the latter function, he was primarily responsible for the passage of a highly controversial amnesty law , through which around 15,000 prisoners - mostly petty criminals, but also many convicted of mafia law - were released from prisons.

Together with Salvatore Cuffaro , president of the Sicilian regional government, Mastella was embroiled in a scandal when her close ties to Francesco Campanella , a breakaway mafia member, were revealed. Cuffaro and Mastella had been groomsmen at Campanella's wedding in 2000. This had helped the mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano to secretly escape to France.

Since October 2007 the public prosecutor's office in Catanzaro has been investigating Mastella and other politicians for abuse of office, corruption and embezzlement in the so-called Why not affair (after the name of an employment agency that is said to belong to a criminal organization). Mastella had already applied for the transfer of the responsible investigator Luigi De Magistris in September 2007 .

After the obvious involvement of other southern Italian local politicians, especially members of the UDEUR and also Mastella's wife Sandra Lonardo , became known on January 16, 2008 , Mastella submitted his resignation on the same day and parted with him on January 17 Party from the Prodi government. Although the UDEUR initially assured the government of its further parliamentary support, when it was unable to secure Mastella from the investigation, it finally withdrew its confidence and thus triggered a government crisis. For the early parliamentary election in 2008, Mastella initially announced an alliance between his UDEUR and Berlusconi's Popolo della Libertà (PdL), but finally decided not to run at all. After nine legislative terms (32 years) he left parliament.

MEPs and Mayor of Benevento

In the European elections in 2009 he was elected to the European Parliament on the list of the PdL in southern Italy. For the local elections in Naples in 2011, he applied for the mayor's office, but received only 2.2% of the vote. In November 2013 Mastella joined the re-established Forza Italia Berlusconis party . In the 2014 European elections, he received around 50,000 preferential votes, which, however, was not enough for re-election. As a candidate for the center-right camp, he was elected mayor of the provincial capital Benevento in 2016.

swell

  1. ↑ Italian justice minister linked to mafia inquiry In: The Guardian (May 18, 2006)
  2. ↑ La Procura generale di Catanzaro avoca l'inchiesta di De Magistris ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: La Stampa (October 20, 2007)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lastampa.it
  3. ↑ La Voce di Fiore (June 19, 2007)
  4. ↑ Mastella al Csm: "Trasferire i giudici di Catanzaro" ( Memento of the original from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: La Stampa (September 21, 2007)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lastampa.it
  5. ^ "Concussione" nei confronti di Bassolino. Nei guai i Mastella e l'Udeur campano. In: Corriere della Sera (January 16, 2008)
  6. ↑ Mastella lascia la maggioranza. «È venuto il momento di dire basta» In: La Repubblica (January 21, 2008)

Web links

Commons : Clemente Mastella  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Mastella, Clemente
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mastella, Mario Clemente (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian politician, member of the Camera dei deputati, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Ceppaloni , Benevento Province