39 Facts About Mario Oriani-Ambrosini

Mario Gaspare R Oriani-Ambrosini was an Italian constitutional lawyer and politician who was a Member of Parliament in South Africa with the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini was the son of Columbia University trained constitutional law professor and international lawyer Raffaele Oriani, who died in 1971, at 39.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini was then adopted and raised by his grand-uncle Gaspare Ambrosini, an Italian founding father, jurist and statesman, who presided over the Italian Constitutional Court.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini maintained a lifelong association with it and was a member of its General Council.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini attended the Sapienza University of Rome, Harvard University and Georgetown University Law Center.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini conducted research under the direction of the Secretary of the Italian Parliament, Guglielmo Negri, for the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and the Italian Chamber of Deputies on the US environmental system and the National Environmental Policy Act to support the drafting of an EEC directive and assess its compatibility with the Italian constitutional framework.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini assisted Blaustein in a graduate seminar on constitution's drafting and became the Vice President of the Philadelphia Foundation and the public-advocacy UN-accredited law-firm Human Rights Advocates International, both presided over by Blaustein.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini collaborated on the upkeep of the Blaunstein's 60+ volume collections of "The Constitutions of the World", and "Constitutions of Dependencies and Territories".

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini began a lifelong friendship with businessman Peter J Knop and became the General Counsel of the Washington DCKnop Organization then consisting of TFI, SWPP Development Corp.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini served as the managing director of SWPP and Acrycle, dealing with venture capital and investment management, advising on the structuring of ventures, as well as waste recycling and agribusiness in a highly regulated and litigation-prone environment.

For three years Mario Oriani-Ambrosini worked full-time as the chief constitutional negotiator for the IFP and the erstwhile KwaZulu Government, and was involved in all stages and phases of the negotiation from its beginning to the end of pre-election negotiations, including the entire drafting of the 1994 interim Constitution.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini played a key role in the international mediation effort led by Henry Kissinger and Lord Carrington and the negotiation of the Agreement for Reconciliation and Peace which enabled an all-inclusive democratic election in 1994.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini held this position for 10 years, providing advice for all issues before Cabinet and in Parliament, including the negotiation and drafting of the final national Constitution, the adoption of hundreds of comprehensive legislative reforms and policy documents transforming almost all fields of government and civil society.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini co-drafted film and publication laws, citizenship amendment laws, homosexual life partnership and customary union regulations and other reforms which carry a libertarian slant.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini is acknowledged as being the main, if not the sole, architect of the South African immigration reform process from 1996 to 2004.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini was appointed by Buthelezi as a Member of the task force formulating the new South African immigration policy where he became the drafter of both the policy and the new legislation.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini was responsible for piloting the legislation through NEDLAC and Parliament, acting as the Ministers spokesperson in this often controversial process.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini then drafted the interim immigration regulations and piloted the subsequent process of consultations for the final regulations.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini was intimately involved in the structuring of the electronic universal population and fingerprints registry and related national ID card, as well as the departmental restructuring to devolve civil affairs delivery aspects to municipalities and in all aspects of the department's policies and legislation.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini promoted the first high level security cooperation between his Department and US security and negotiated high-level cooperation with Australia in refugee affairs.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini advised the Coalition of Traditional Leaders and precursory groupings of traditional leaders and partook in all major activities of the governing and policy making bodies of the IFP, including re-drafting most of the Party's constitution and supporting all the IFP's annual party conferences.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini established Promethea Corporation, a philanthropic company which manufactured safe kerosene cookers in Vietnam and distributed them in Africa to replace unsafe versions used by millions of people.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini participated in the 4th World Parliamentary Convention on Tibet and directed successful public interest constitutional litigation.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini became a Member of the National Assembly of South Africa in May 2009 where he served on the following Committees: Trade and Industry, Public Enterprises, Economic Development, Justice and Constitutional Development Portfolio, Finance and Rules, Private Members Bills and the Constitutional Review Joint Committees.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini brought to the South African Parliament the spirit and methodology of nonviolent democratic radicalism.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini organized and single-handedly executed the first filibuster in South African parliamentary history, which forced a four-month delay in the passing of the controversial Protection of State Information Bill - South Africa's secrecy law.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini challenged the constitutionality of the Rules of Parliament in a three-year-long multi stage litigation which culminated in a landmark Constitutional Court decision which declared the unconstitutionality of all the Rules of Parliament which prevented a single Member of Parliament from introducing legislation.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini intervened as an amicus curiae in the constitutional litigation which barred the extension of the term of office of the Chief Justice and in litigation determining the measure of freedom of speech allowed in Parliament.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini used the tool of requesting the President not to assent legislation to return it to Parliament on constitutional grounds, which the President did with respect of the controversial Intellectual Property Law Amendment Bill which would take out of the public domain indigenous folklore and traditional knowledge.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini was one of the six founding members and a director of the Parliamentary Institute of South Africa a tax-exempt, cross-party parliamentary forum, which facilitates meaningful dialogue amongst serving and former parliamentarians, captains of industry, opinion makers, leaders of civil society, academics and diplomats.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini was part of INPaT, an action group established and mandated at the World Parliamentary Conference on Tibet.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini has visited Tibetan camps in India and has been an outspoken advocate of human rights protection in Tibet, often publicly challenging the Chinese government to allow an international parliamentary fact-finding mission to have unfettered access to Tibet.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini led his party leader's successful lawsuit against the ANC, which found the South African government's repeated denial of an entry visa to the Dalai Lama to be wrongful.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini published extensively on economic and financial matters, advocating a libertarian model for the realization of a just and fair society.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini's thinking, expressed in his Libertarian Manifesto, endorses the role of the state in providing free and universal access to services such as education, health and social assistance, but suggests that the state ought to operate or own no delivery infrastructure or facility.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini has advocated the reform of the monetary system to substitute debt-based banknotes with government issued debt-free notes in a system which no longer allows banking fractional reserve.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini maintained his legal practice in the US, albeit remotely, as well as a standing political association with the US libertarian movement.

On 19 February 2014 Mario Oriani-Ambrosini stood up in the SA National Assembly and introduced a private members bill to decriminalise the medical use of cannabis.

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini died in 2014, slightly over a year after publicly disclosing that he had Stage 4 lung cancer.