23 Facts About Gianfranco Fini

Gianfranco Fini was born on 3 January 1952 and is a retired Italian politician who served as the president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 2008 to 2013 and Deputy Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006.

Gianfranco Fini is the former leader of the far-right Italian Social Movement, the conservative National Alliance, and the center-right Future and Freedom party.

Gianfranco Fini was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Silvio Berlusconi's government from 2001 to 2006.

The name Gianfranco was chosen in remembrance of a cousin, who was killed when he was 20 years old by partisans soon after the liberation of Northern Italy on 25 April 1945.

Gianfranco Fini's first known involvement with politics occurred in 1968, when the 16-year-old Fini was involved in clashes with communist activists, among them a protest in front of a cinema against the screening of the John Wayne movie The Green Berets.

Gianfranco Fini then began his political career in the Youth Front, the MSI youth organization.

Gianfranco Fini had placed fifth among seven candidates elected in the national secretariat of the youth.

Gianfranco Fini collaborated with the party's newspaper, Il Secolo d'Italia, along with the youth movement magazine Dissenso.

Gianfranco Fini was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies on 26 June 1983 as a member of the MSI.

Giorgio Almirante died in May 1988, and at the party's congress in Sorrento that year, Gianfranco Fini defeated the right wing of the party, headed by Pino Rauti, and was elected party secretary.

Gianfranco Fini remained in the national secretariat of the MSI until January 1990, when at the next party congress in Rimini, Pino Rauti was elected secretary.

Gianfranco Fini held this post until the dissolution of party in 1995.

In January 1995, the Party's congress in Fiuggi marked a radical change, afterwards referred to as la svolta di Fiuggi and merged the MSI with conservative elements of the disbanded Christian Democrats to form the National Alliance, of which Gianfranco Fini assumed the presidency.

Gianfranco Fini became deputy prime minister in 2001 and foreign minister in November 2004.

Gianfranco Fini began a personal evolution towards more socially liberal positions in the 2000s, notwithstanding the opposition of the rest of his party.

At first, Gianfranco Fini reacted coldly, affirming that AN would not participate, judging the way the new party was born confused and superficial, and expressing open dissent against his ally of the "former coalition".

Gianfranco Fini then resigned the presidency of AN in anticipation of unification with the new People of Freedom party.

Gianfranco Fini was considered a moderating force between Berlusconi's government and the President of the Republic, eventually suggesting that Berlusconi should step down.

Gianfranco Fini fought against the bad practices of absenteeism and double-voting by MPs in the Italian Parliament, promoting a digital voting system to prevent other MPs from voting on behalf of absent members, judging it "immoral" 19 MPs out of a total of 630 refused to allow their fingerprints to be recorded, and the system was implemented on a voluntary basis.

Gianfranco Fini negatively judged the desire of the Berlusconi government to intervene with a decree in the case of Eluana Englaro and supported the need to defend the secularism of the State, being then criticized by members of UDC and of his own party.

Gianfranco Fini founded the parliamentarian group "Futuro e liberta per l'Italia" in hopes of establishing a centrist "third pole", similar to what Pier Ferdinando Casini had done with the Union of the Centre.

Apart from the Social Right area of his traditional rival Pino Rauti, the right-wing intellectual Marcello Veneziani accused Gianfranco Fini of having lost any connection to right-wing thought and of representing an astral right, with no similarity to any other European right-wing group.

Gianfranco Fini has lately been accused of being incoherent by some theo-con members for holding socially conservative political positions while at the same time being separated and never married in Church.