Mino Martinazzoli

Fermo "Mino" Martinazzoli (Italian pronunciation: [ˈfermo ˈmiːno martinatˈtsɔːli]; 3 November 1931 – 4 September 2011) was an Italian lawyer, politician, and former minister. He was the last secretary of the Christian Democracy (DC) party and the first secretary of the Italian People's Party (PPI) founded in 1994.

Mino Martinazzoli
Mayor of Brescia
In office 5 December 1994 – 14 December 1998
Preceded by	Paolo Corsini
Succeeded by	Paolo Corsini
Minister of Defence
In office 22 July 1989 – 27 July 1990
Prime Minister	Giulio Andreotti
Preceded by	Valerio Zanone
Succeeded by	Virginio Rognoni
Minister of Justice
In office 4 August 1983 – 1 August 1986
Prime Minister	Bettino Craxi
Preceded by	Clelio Darida
Succeeded by	Virginio Rognoni
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office 12 July 1983 – 22 April 1992
Constituency	Brescia–Bergamo
Member of the Senate of the Republic
In office 22 April 1992 – 14 April 1994
In office 25 May 1972 – 12 July 1983
Constituency	Brescia
President of the province of Brescia
In office 10 May 1970 – 22 June 1972
Preceded by	Ercoliano Bazoli
Succeeded by	Tarcisio Gitti
Personal details
Born	Fermo Martinazzoli (1931-11-30)30 November 1931 Orzinuovi, Italy
Died	4 September 2011(2011-09-04) (aged 79) Brescia, Italy
Political party	DC (till 1994) PPI (1994–2002) UDEUR (2004–2011)
Alma mater	University of Pavia

Early life and education

Born in Orzinuovi, Martinazzoli studied at Collegio Borromeo in Pavia, where he received a law degree. He then became a lawyer.

Career

Martinazzoli's political career began in the 1960s and 1970s, when he assumed official roles in Brescia's DC. From 1970 to 1972, he was the province of Brescia president. In 1972, he was elected in the Senate of the Republic, after which he became Minister of Justice in 1983, a position he held for three years. In 1986–1989, he was president of DC's deputies. In 1989–1990, he was Minister of Defence but resigned, together with other ministers of the DC's left-wing, after the approval of a law that strengthened Silvio Berlusconi's monopoly over private TV channels in Italy.

In 1992, when the DC party was being wiped out by the Tangentopoli bribery scandal, Martinazzoli, generally respected as an honest and competent man, was elected national secretary. Despite his efforts, the political crisis which followed the corruption scandals forced him to dissolve the DC in 1994. Martinazzoli then founded a new party, based on similar ideals, whose name recalled that of the ancestor of the DC, the Italian People's Party, which was founded in 1919 by Luigi Sturzo. In the new majoritarian system, Martinazzoli's party placed itself in the political centre between the political left, which included the heirs of the Italian Communist Party, and the political right with the new Berlusconi's Forza Italia, which had allied with the Northern Italy-based regionalist party, the Lega Nord (Northern League), as part of the Pole of Freedoms, and the post-fascist National Alliance as part of the Pole of Good Government. His will not to ally with any of them caused numerous politicians, such as Pierferdinando Casini and Clemente Mastella, to leave the PPI and form the Christian Democratic Centre (CCD), which supported Berlusconi. At the 1994 Italian general election, Martinazzoli formed a centrist alliance known as the Pact for Italy, including PPI and other democratic centrist forces. The result of the election was disappointing, with PPI obtaining 11%, some one third of the DC's consensus before its dissolution. In the same year, he accepted to run as mayor of Brescia for the new centre-left coalition, known as The Olive Tree, winning the final ballot and acting as mayor until 1998.

In 2000, Martinazzoli lost the competition with Roberto Formigoni for the president of Lombardy. After the PPI was dissolved in 2002, Martinazzoli migrated to Mastella's UDEUR in 2004, being appointed as its president, a position from which he resigned in 2005. He died on 4 September 2011, at the age of 79.

Electoral history

Election	House	Constituency	Party		Votes	Result
1972	Senate of the Republic	Brescia		DC	84,749	Y Elected
1976	Senate of the Republic	Brescia		DC	90,708	Y Elected
1979	Senate of the Republic	Brescia		DC	90,137	Y Elected
1983	Chamber of Deputies	Brescia–Bergamo		DC	45,208	Y Elected
1987	Chamber of Deputies	Brescia–Bergamo		DC	70,895	Y Elected
1992	Senate of the Republic	Brescia		DC	66,206	Y Elected

Bibliography

• Martinazzoli, Mino; Valle, Annachiara (2009). Uno strano democristiano (in Italian). Milan: Rizzoli. ISBN 978-88-17-03427-2. Archived from the original on 6 April 2024. Retrieved 6 April 2024 – via Google Books.