Roberto Calderoli
Encyclopedia
Roberto Calderoli is an Italian politician and a member of the Senate of Italy. He is currently a Minister without portfolio
for Legislative Simplification in the Berlusconi IV Cabinet
.
He previously served as Minister without portfolio for Reforms and Devolution in the Berlusconi II Cabinet
(since 20 June 2004) and in the Berlusconi III Cabinet
(until 18 February 2006, when he resigned following the so-called "cartoon crisis").
Roberto Calderoli is a leading member of the Northern League
. He is usually seen as representing the component originating from the right wingand Bergamo
, whereas Roberto Maroni
represents the area originating from the left wing and Varese
.
and a dentist like many of his relativies, Calderoli started his political experience with the Lega Lombarda
, a precursor of the federated Northern League, of which he was the president in 1993 and national secretary between 1995 and 2002.
Between 1990 and 1995 he sat in the town council in Bergamo
, and since 2002 he has been the coordinator of the
national secretariat of the Northern League. He was an MP in the Chamber of Deputies
between 1992 and 2001, as a representative of the Northern League-Padania
, and for a while he was president of the Commission for Social Affairs.
In the 2001 elections
he was elected to the Senate of Italy in the first-past-the-post constituency of Albino
. He then became the vice-president of the Senate until July 2004, when he was appointed Minister for Institutional Reforms in the place of Umberto Bossi
, the longtime leader of the Northern League who had suffered a serious stroke and could not perform his duties. During his mandate, he also wrote a new electoral law based on proportional representation with a strong majority premium rather than plurality voting system
, which was first introduced in Italy in 1994 by a referendum. Successively, Calderoli himself criticized the electoral law he wrote by defining it una porcata (literally, "a piggish stuff").
. A party presents its own closed list
and it can join other parties in alliances. The coalition which receives a plurality automatically wins at least 26 seats. Respecting this condition, seats are divided between coalitions, and subsequently to party lists, using the largest remainder method
with a Hare quota
. To receive seats, a party must overcome the barrage of 8% of the vote if it contests a single race, or of 3% of the vote if it runs in alliance. The change in the electoral law was strongly requested by the UDC
, and finally agreed by Berlusconi, although criticised (including by political scientist Giovanni Sartori
) for its comeback to proportionalism
and its timing, less than one year before general elections.
Calderoli himself defined the electoral law as a porcata - a pork affair.
, on February 8, 2006, he made statements favourable to usage of force against Muslims and asked for the intervention of Pope Benedict XVI
to form a "coalition", referencing the battles of Lepanto
and Vienna
.
On 15 February 2006, he announced he would wear a T-shirt with the Muhammad
cartoons. Later that evening, just after the news broadcast on state flagship television station Rai Uno
, during a live interview he said: "I am wearing one of those T-shirts even now", and promptly unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a T-shirt with a caricature emblazoned on it. Though the press reported it to be one of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, it was actually the cartoon published on the France Soir's front page in the February 1st 2006 issue, the very day the same newspaper published the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Actually, Calderoli did not show one of the cartoons that caused the international crisis.
The event was widely published in Libya
(a former colony of Italy), and about 1,000 people gathered for a protest and began throwing rocks and bottles toward the Italian consulate in Benghazi
which they set ablaze. In clashes with the police, at least eleven people died and twenty-five were wounded.
Subsequently, Berlusconi
asked Calderoli to resign because his act was against the government's political line, but, in an interview given to Italian newspaper La Repubblica
, Calderoli declared that he would not resign. He eventually gave in to the massive pressure coming from all parties (and lack of support in his own), and resigned on 18 February 2006.
Final, Calderoli criticized France for having "sacrificed its identity for results by fielding niggers, Muslims and Communists"
These comments drew many protests from the French embassy, the Italian Green Party (who said that Calderoli is "no better than the Ku Klux Klan
") and the Party of Italian Communists
among others.
Moreover, Calderoli said the centre-left government "would very probably have supported this France with no identity and the headbutts of Zidane".
In June 2008 Calderoli said in a TV interview: "It is obvious that there are ethnic groups and populations that are more inclined to work and others not. And there is greater predisposition for crime by someone over others."
so that it prohibited the construction of minarets
, Calderoli told the Italian news agency ANSA that Switzerland had a sent a clear signal: "Yes to church towers, no to minarets". He further stated that he wished Switzerland would act as a model for Italy in this regard.
Minister without Portfolio
A minister without portfolio is either a government minister with no specific responsibilities or a minister that does not head a particular ministry...
for Legislative Simplification in the Berlusconi IV Cabinet
Berlusconi IV Cabinet
Berlusconi IV Cabinet has been the cabinet of the government of Italy from 8 May 2008 to 16 November 2011.As of July 2011, it was composed of 24 ministers, 4 deputy ministers and 39 under-secretaries, for a total of 67 members.-Sources:*...
.
He previously served as Minister without portfolio for Reforms and Devolution in the Berlusconi II Cabinet
Berlusconi II Cabinet
The Berlusconi II Cabinet was the 57th cabinet of the Italian Republic, and the first cabinet of the XIV Legislature. It took office following the 2001 elections, and held office from 11 June 2001 until 23 April 2005, a total of 1,412 days, or 3 years, 10 months and 12 days...
(since 20 June 2004) and in the Berlusconi III Cabinet
Berlusconi III Cabinet
The Berlusconi III Cabinet was the cabinet of the government of Italy from 23 April 2005 to 5 May 2006. It was the 58th cabinet of the Italian Republic, and the second cabinet of the XIV Legislature.Composition of the governemnt:...
(until 18 February 2006, when he resigned following the so-called "cartoon crisis").
Roberto Calderoli is a leading member of the Northern League
Northern League (Italy)
Lega Nord , whose complete name is Lega Nord per l'Indipendenza della Padania , is a federalist and regionalist political party in Italy founded in 1991 as a federation of several regional parties of Northern and Central Italy, most of which had arisen...
. He is usually seen as representing the component originating from the right wingand Bergamo
Bergamo
Bergamo is a town and comune in Lombardy, Italy, about 40 km northeast of Milan. The comune is home to over 120,000 inhabitants. It is served by the Orio al Serio Airport, which also serves the Province of Bergamo, and to a lesser extent the metropolitan area of Milan...
, whereas Roberto Maroni
Roberto Maroni
Roberto Maroni is an Italian politician from Varese. He is a member of the Northern League political movement. Since 1992 he is a Member of the Chamber of Duputies of the Italian Republic, always elected in Lombardy's districts and costituencies...
represents the area originating from the left wing and Varese
Varese
Varese is a town and comune in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 55 km north of Milan.It is the capital of the Province of Varese. The hinterland or urban part of the city is called Varesotto.- Geography :...
.
Career
A native of BergamoBergamo
Bergamo is a town and comune in Lombardy, Italy, about 40 km northeast of Milan. The comune is home to over 120,000 inhabitants. It is served by the Orio al Serio Airport, which also serves the Province of Bergamo, and to a lesser extent the metropolitan area of Milan...
and a dentist like many of his relativies, Calderoli started his political experience with the Lega Lombarda
Lega Lombarda
Lega Lombarda is a regionalist political party active in Lombardy. Led by Giancarlo Giorgetti, the party is the second largest in the region....
, a precursor of the federated Northern League, of which he was the president in 1993 and national secretary between 1995 and 2002.
Between 1990 and 1995 he sat in the town council in Bergamo
Bergamo
Bergamo is a town and comune in Lombardy, Italy, about 40 km northeast of Milan. The comune is home to over 120,000 inhabitants. It is served by the Orio al Serio Airport, which also serves the Province of Bergamo, and to a lesser extent the metropolitan area of Milan...
, and since 2002 he has been the coordinator of the
national secretariat of the Northern League. He was an MP in the Chamber of Deputies
Italian Chamber of Deputies
The Italian Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the Parliament of Italy. It has 630 seats, a plurality of which is controlled presently by liberal-conservative party People of Freedom. Twelve deputies represent Italian citizens outside of Italy. Deputies meet in the Palazzo Montecitorio. A...
between 1992 and 2001, as a representative of the Northern League-Padania
Padania
Padania is an alternative name for the Po Valley in Italy. The term was sparingly used until the early 1990s, when Lega Nord, a political party in Italy, proposed Padania as a possible denomination for an autonomous Northern Italy...
, and for a while he was president of the Commission for Social Affairs.
In the 2001 elections
Italian general election, 2001
A national general election was held in Italy on May 13, 2001 to elect members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic. The 14th Parliament of the Italian republic was chosen....
he was elected to the Senate of Italy in the first-past-the-post constituency of Albino
Albino, Italy
Albino is a comune in the province of Bergamo, in Lombardy, northern Italy. It is located north of Bergamo and is situated in the Seriana valley. The population continues to increase.- History:...
. He then became the vice-president of the Senate until July 2004, when he was appointed Minister for Institutional Reforms in the place of Umberto Bossi
Umberto Bossi
Umberto Bossi is an Italian politician, leader of the Northern League, a party seeking autonomy or independence for Northern Italy. He is married to Manuela Marrone and has four sons ....
, the longtime leader of the Northern League who had suffered a serious stroke and could not perform his duties. During his mandate, he also wrote a new electoral law based on proportional representation with a strong majority premium rather than plurality voting system
Plurality voting system
The plurality voting system is a single-winner voting system often used to elect executive officers or to elect members of a legislative assembly which is based on single-member constituencies...
, which was first introduced in Italy in 1994 by a referendum. Successively, Calderoli himself criticized the electoral law he wrote by defining it una porcata (literally, "a piggish stuff").
New electoral law (2005)
A new electoral law was established in 2005 under Calderoli's rapporteurship, and then dubbed Calderoli Law, and it is a form of semi-proportional representationBlock voting
Block voting and Bloc voting may refer to:*Plurality-at-large voting, a voting system with multiple winners and a checkbox ballot*Preferential block voting, a voting system with multiple winners and a preferential ballot...
. A party presents its own closed list
Closed list
Closed list describes the variant of party-list proportional representation where voters can only vote for political parties as a whole and thus have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected...
and it can join other parties in alliances. The coalition which receives a plurality automatically wins at least 26 seats. Respecting this condition, seats are divided between coalitions, and subsequently to party lists, using the largest remainder method
Largest remainder method
The largest remainder method is one way of allocating seats proportionally for representative assemblies with party list voting systems...
with a Hare quota
Hare quota
The Hare quota is a formula used under some forms of the Single Transferable Vote system and the largest remainder method of party-list proportional representation...
. To receive seats, a party must overcome the barrage of 8% of the vote if it contests a single race, or of 3% of the vote if it runs in alliance. The change in the electoral law was strongly requested by the UDC
UDC
-Politics:*Central African Democratic Union , a Central African Republic political party*Christian Democratic Union , a Dominican Republic political party...
, and finally agreed by Berlusconi, although criticised (including by political scientist Giovanni Sartori
Giovanni Sartori
Giovanni Sartori is an Italian political scientist specialized in the study of democracy and comparative politics.-Biography:Born in Florence in 1924. Sartori began his academic career as a lecturer in the History of Modern Philosophy...
) for its comeback to proportionalism
Proportionalism
Proportionalism is an ethical theory that lies between teleological or consequential theories and deontological theories. Teleological or consequential theories, like utilitarianism, say that an action is right or wrong, depending on the consequences it produces, whereas deontological theories,...
and its timing, less than one year before general elections.
Calderoli himself defined the electoral law as a porcata - a pork affair.
Role in the "Cartoon Crisis"
During the international crisis sparked by the publishing of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoonsJyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy began after 12 editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005...
, on February 8, 2006, he made statements favourable to usage of force against Muslims and asked for the intervention of Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI is the 265th and current Pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign of the Vatican City State and the leader of the Catholic Church as well as the other 22 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See...
to form a "coalition", referencing the battles of Lepanto
Battle of Lepanto (1571)
The Battle of Lepanto took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Catholic maritime states, decisively defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire in five hours of fighting on the northern edge of the Gulf of Patras, off western Greece...
and Vienna
Battle of Vienna
The Battle of Vienna took place on 11 and 12 September 1683 after Vienna had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months...
.
On 15 February 2006, he announced he would wear a T-shirt with the Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
cartoons. Later that evening, just after the news broadcast on state flagship television station Rai Uno
Rai Uno
Rai 1 is the primary television station of RAI, the national public service broadcaster, and the most watched television channel in Italy. It was born as Rai Tv from 1954 to 1961, called Programma Nazionale from 1961 to 1979, after called Rete 1 from 1979 to 1982, then called Rai Uno from 1982 to...
, during a live interview he said: "I am wearing one of those T-shirts even now", and promptly unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a T-shirt with a caricature emblazoned on it. Though the press reported it to be one of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, it was actually the cartoon published on the France Soir's front page in the February 1st 2006 issue, the very day the same newspaper published the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Actually, Calderoli did not show one of the cartoons that caused the international crisis.
The event was widely published in Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
(a former colony of Italy), and about 1,000 people gathered for a protest and began throwing rocks and bottles toward the Italian consulate in Benghazi
Benghazi
Benghazi is the second largest city in Libya, the main city of the Cyrenaica region , and the former provisional capital of the National Transitional Council. The wider metropolitan area is also a district of Libya...
which they set ablaze. In clashes with the police, at least eleven people died and twenty-five were wounded.
Subsequently, Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi , also known as Il Cavaliere – from knighthood to the Order of Merit for Labour which he received in 1977 – is an Italian politician and businessman who served three terms as Prime Minister of Italy, from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006, and 2008 to 2011. Berlusconi is also the...
asked Calderoli to resign because his act was against the government's political line, but, in an interview given to Italian newspaper La Repubblica
La Repubblica
la Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. Founded in 1976 in Rome by the journalist Eugenio Scalfari, as of 2008 is the second largest circulation newspaper, behind the Corriere della Sera.-Foundation:...
, Calderoli declared that he would not resign. He eventually gave in to the massive pressure coming from all parties (and lack of support in his own), and resigned on 18 February 2006.
Roberto Calderoli and racism
Following Italy's win against France in the 2006 World Cup2006 FIFA World Cup
The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which won the right to host the event in July 2000. Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six...
Final, Calderoli criticized France for having "sacrificed its identity for results by fielding niggers, Muslims and Communists"
These comments drew many protests from the French embassy, the Italian Green Party (who said that Calderoli is "no better than the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
") and the Party of Italian Communists
Party of Italian Communists
The Party of Italian Communists is a communist political party in Italy. Its long-time leader is Oliviero Diliberto.-Foundation and early years:...
among others.
Moreover, Calderoli said the centre-left government "would very probably have supported this France with no identity and the headbutts of Zidane".
In June 2008 Calderoli said in a TV interview: "It is obvious that there are ethnic groups and populations that are more inclined to work and others not. And there is greater predisposition for crime by someone over others."
Comments on the Swiss vote to ban minarets
In November 2009, after a national referendum resulted in the changing the Swiss constitutionSwiss Federal Constitution
The Federal Constitution of 18 April 1999 is the third and current federal constitution of Switzerland. It establishes the Swiss Confederation as a federal republic of 26 cantons , contains a catalogue of individual and popular rights , delineates the responsibilities of the...
so that it prohibited the construction of minarets
Minaret controversy in Switzerland
The minaret controversy in Switzerland refers to construction of minarets, which has been subject to legal and political controversy in Switzerland during the 2000s and a Swiss referendum regarding this issue. In a November 2009 referendum, a constitutional amendment banning the construction of new...
, Calderoli told the Italian news agency ANSA that Switzerland had a sent a clear signal: "Yes to church towers, no to minarets". He further stated that he wished Switzerland would act as a model for Italy in this regard.