Francesco Storace

Francesco Storace (2006)

Francesco Storace (born January 25, 1959 in Cassino , Province of Frosinone ) is an Italian politician . As a member of the Alleanza Nazionale , he was Regional President of Lazio from 2000 to 2005 , then Italian Minister of Health until 2006 and Senator from 2006 to 2008. From 2008 to 2017 he was chairman of the La Destra party , then until 2018 chairman of the Movimento Nazionale per la Sovranità .

Career

Storace around 1996

He began his career with the newspaper Il Secolo d'Italia , the party organ of the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano , which later became the right-wing conservative Alleanza Nazionale . At the time he was a supporter of Gianfranco Fini . In 1994 Storace was elected for the first time to the Chamber of Deputies, to which he belonged after his re-election from 1996 to 2001 as a representative of the Trionfale constituency in Rome. From 1996 to 2000 he was chairman of the parliamentary committee for the supervision of public broadcasting ( Rai ). Within the Alleanza Nazionale, Storace was next to Gianni Alemanno spokesman for the Cantiera Italia (“construction site Italy”) and later Destra sociale (“social rights”) movement, which wanted to preserve as much of the former MSI as possible, adhered most strongly to movement fascism and least of all was ready to open up the party.

In April 2000 he was elected president of the Lazio region as a candidate for the center-right alliance Casa delle Libertà . At that time he called for “history textbooks to be subjected to a thorough revision”. This aimed to change the historiography and culture of remembrance, to establish criticism of the Resistance and to revalue fascism. Storace pushed through the establishment of a corresponding review committee in Lazio. After five years in office, however, he missed re-election and was defeated by the center-left candidate Piero Marrazzo with 47.4% . He then became Minister of Health in the Berlusconi III cabinet .

In March 2006 he was involved in the so-called "Laziogate" scandal, which led to his resignation as minister. Storace was suspected hacker to have instructed to enter the population register database of the city of Rome and the computers of the party Azione Sociale of Alessandra Mussolini spy. He wanted to prove - so the allegation - that the party had submitted false supporter signatures in order to run against him in the regional elections in Lazio. After seven years of criminal proceedings, the appellate court acquitted him in full in 2012. On April 10, 2006, he was elected to the Senate, at the top of the Alleanza Nazionale's party list, to which he was a member until 2008.

On July 3, 2007, after repeatedly criticizing Gianfranco Fini's leadership style and the party's creeping shift towards the political center, he left the Alleanza Nazionale. He founded his own, radical right-wing party called La Destra (LD; "The Right"), which Daniela Santanchè also joined. For the 2008 parliamentary election, LD entered into an alliance with the neo-fascist Fiamma Tricolore , but failed because of the entry hurdle. In the same year he ran for the mayor's office in Rome, but received only 3.3 percent of the vote. For the regional elections in Lazio in 2010, La Destra entered into an alliance with the center-right collecting party Il Popolo della Libertà (PdL), in which Alleanza Nazionale and Forza Italia had now merged. Storace supported Renata Polverini's top candidacy and was himself elected to the regional council.

From 2012 to 2018 Storace was editor of the online newspaper Il Giornale d'Italia . In February 2013, he ran again for an alliance of his party with the PdL and other right-wing small parties for the office of regional president of Lazio, but lost 29.3 percent to the center-left candidate Nicola Zingaretti . However, he was again given a seat on the regional council. For the local elections in Rome in 2016, Storace ran its own list that supported Alfio Marchini's candidacy for mayor , but only got 0.6 percent. Storace merged his party La Destra in 2017 with the Azione Nazionale by Gianni Alemanno . The Movimento Nazionale per la Sovranità ("National Movement for Sovereignty"), whose presidente Storace was until 2018, was created. In November 2018 he joined the Fratelli d'Italia party . In January 2019 he took over the editorial post of Il Secolo d'Italia , which now only appears online.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Francesco Storace , Camera dei deputati, Portale Storico.
2. ↑ Markus K. Grimm: The problematic reinvention of the Italian right. The Alleanza Nazionale and its way to the center. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, p. 97.
3. ↑ Markus K. Grimm: The problematic reinvention of the Italian right. The Alleanza Nazionale and its way to the center. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, p. 151.
4. ↑ Laziogate, Storace assolto in Appello "Un calvario, mi dimisi anche da ministro". In: La Repubblica , October 29, 2012.
5. ↑ Francesco STORACE, XV Legislatura. Scheda di attività, Senato della Repubblica.
6. ↑ Markus K. Grimm: The problematic reinvention of the Italian right. The Alleanza Nazionale and its way to the center. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, p. 271.