Farewell to Gerardo Bianco, 92 years old, a life in the Christian Democrats

ROME. Gerardo Bianco, historical exponent of the Christian Democrats, died this morning in Rome. Born in Guardia Lombardi, in the province of Avellino, on 12 September 1931, winner of a scholarship at the Augustinianum College of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, he graduated in classical literature in Parma, later becoming a university professor of the history of Latin language and Latin literature at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy (formerly Magisterium) of the University of Parma. In his youth he was active in the Italian Catholic University Federation (FUCI).

A very long-standing politician, Bianco was a deputy in the Chamber between 1968 and 2008 in 9 legislatures (from the V to the XV), 7 of which from 1968 to 1994 with the Christian Democrats, for which he was provincial secretary of Avellino, responsible of the scientific research sector and of the Studies Office.

Always a great scholar, Latinist, he was co-director of the Horace Encyclopedia at the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia. Considered a great southerner, he was president of the National Association for the interests of Southern Italy, founded in 1910, filling a role that over the years has been covered by illustrious figures such as Giustino Fortunato, Benedetto Croce, Umberto Zanotti Bianco and Manlio Rossi Doria.

Born politically close to the current of the DC “Base”, made up mainly of Avellino citizens and led by Fiorentino Sullo first and then Ciriaco De Mita, he moved away from it in 1978 to approach the one led by Carlo Donat-Cattin first and Franco Marini after «Forze Nuove ». He was group leader in Montecitorio of the DC during the VIII legislature of the Republic from 1979 to 1983, where he collaborated with the Radical Party to approve various measures.

During the X legislature of the Republic he was vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies from 1987 until 1990, when he became Minister of public education in July 1990 (until March ’91) in the sixth Andreotti government, which he accepted against his will under pressure from Arnaldo Forlani. From 1992 to 1994 he again chaired the DC group in the Chamber. Character of undisputed morality, he is considered in the political environment a man of culture lent to politics. He characterized his political action and life with respect for institutions and public ethics. In 1994, following the end of the DC, overwhelmed by the Mani Pulite investigation and by the Mafia trial against Giulio Andreotti, he joined the reborn Italian People’s Party (PPI) of Mino Martinazzoli. In the same year he was elected MEP in Strasbourg of the Italian People’s Party (until 1999). He was always supported by his main secretary Francesco Cuoco known as Franco (Rutino, 26 August 1933-Salerno, 27 November 2005).

The clash with Rocco Buttiglione

In 1995 he sided against the turn to the right by Rocco Buttiglione, secretary of the Italian People’s Party, who on 8 March had decided to ally himself with Silvio Berlusconi’s Polo delle Libertà on the occasion of the regional elections of that year, in particular in a single list together with Forza Italia, the Christian Democratic Center (CCD) and other parties with union of symbols, ignoring the hypothesis of alliances with the Democratic Party of the Left and the problem of the impossibility of forming alliances with the ex-missini of the National Alliance (AN), also accepting the de facto support of AN in the second round of the local elections of ’95. So Bianco gathered around him a part of the center and all of the left of the party, obtaining the rejection of the secretary’s decision by the national assembly. In the following days the vote was annulled by the board of arbitrators presided over by the «buttiglioniano» Gaetano Vairo, but the entire PPI headed by Bianco proceeded through ordinary legal proceedings and elected Bianco himself as secretary.

The rift between the two souls of the party, led by Buttiglione and Bianco, did not heal, so much so that they participated separately in the regional elections: the wing of the party faithful to Buttiglione’s social conservative line presented joint lists with Forza Italia and CCD in all 15 regions called to vote, with the denomination of «Forza Italia – il Polo Popolare», while the Christian social region led by Bianco presented itself with its own lists (in Tuscany and Lazio together with the Pact of Democrats) allied with the centre-left (except in the Marches and Campania where it supported its own candidates for the presidency of the Region), called “Popolare” with an unpublished symbol: a white banner with the profile of a shield drawn above it, whose slogan adopted by the Popolari was “the shield there yes, you add the cross». In fact, the use of the traditional Crusader shield was precluded by the ongoing dispute between the two components over the ownership of the symbol. On 24 June 1995, following months and months of legal disputes, an agreement was finally reached between the two components headed by Buttiglione and Bianco in the PPI: they would separate, where Bianco’s retains the name of the party (Partito Popolare Italiano) while that of Buttiglione maintained the historical symbol (the crossed shield), with which in July it gave life to the United Christian Democrats.

Policies of ’96 and president of the PPI
Bianco led the party for three years, contributing in a decisive way to the birth of the Ulivo and to the election of the Roman Catholic Prodi as prime minister. In those general elections of 1996, within the Olive Tree coalition, the party obtained 6.8% of the votes and was represented in the Prodi I government by three ministers of the Republic (Beniamino Andreatta, Michele Pinto and Rosy Bindi). and several undersecretaries, where, as party secretary, he could have run for any constituency, but chose to risk running only for proportional representation. Despite the national victory, Bianco was not elected to parliament, not having taken enough preferences in the proportional share, due to the spin-off. After those general elections in 1996, in January 1997 he left the secretariat of the PPI and was which he held until 2 October 1999. He was director of the newspaper “Il Popolo”, the official organ of the Christian Democrats first and then of the Italian People’s Party, from August to September 1995 and from October 1999 to April 2000.

Rutelli’s Margherita
In 2002 Bianco was one of the main representatives of the current opposed to the continuation of political activity within Francesco Rutelli’s La Margherita, the list with which the Popular Party presented itself to the 2001 policies. According to Bianco, if it was really necessary to arrive at formal constitution of this political entity that brought together moderate political experiences but different from the Christian democratic tradition, one should not have operated by renouncing one’s flags, but keeping one’s identity and tradition clearly visible, without the formal suspension of the Italian People’s Party. Thus, in parliament he adheres to the Margherita group, but as an independent. In November 2004, together with the parliamentarians Alberto Monticone and Lino Duilio, he founded the Italia Popolare – Movimento per l’Europa movement, which, although not a party, aims to restore an autonomous organized presence to democratic Catholics in Italy so as not to disperse and keep alive the ideological soul that was the PPI. The movement is particularly rooted in Veneto, Piedmont, Lombardy, Lazio, Campania, Abruzzo and Puglia. In the general elections of 2006 he was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies from the lists of the Ulivo (a list that united La Margherita with Piero Fassino’s Democrats of the Left), but as he had not shared the choice to create the Margherita, even less did he share the choice to dissolve the same, together with the Democrats of the Left to give rise to the Democratic Party. After the election he remained for some time as an independent in the parliamentary group of the Ulivo, to then communicate to the chambers (on 15 February 2008) through the reading of a letter that aroused the applause of the entire parliament, not to join the PD and to switch to mixed group.

Rosa for Italy and President of the Association of former MPs
Subsequently, with his Italia Popolare movement, and together with Savino Pezzotta and Bruno Tabacci, he gave life to the centrist project of the Rosa for Italy, a party free from the poles and of Catholic inspiration. This party, born close to the imminent political elections, is forced to embrace the idea of ​​a single list with Pier Ferdinando Casini’s UDC. Bianco decided not to run again to favor a renewal, inserting young people from his movement. But in the lists of candidates of the Unione di centro, electoral cartel of the UDC and Rosa Bianca, the choice of the UDC prevailed to entrust the composition of the lists in Campania to Ciriaco De Mita, who positioned himself as the head of the list in the Senate and ran for the Chamber of Deputies another De Mita (nephew of Ciriaco). Both, in that electoral round, were not elected. Bianco arguing with the leaders of the crusader shield, speaks of a “mediocre agreement that re-proposes, particularly in the South, logics of patronage and despotic and familistic power”. Subsequently he was elected president of the National Association of former parliamentarians which has over 1,500 deputies from each political alignment, a position he still holds. In 2011 he published «La Balena Bianca. The last battle 1990-1994» and in 2012 «The Parable of the Olive Tree. 1994-2000″.