Biography
President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 2001 to 2006. Casini is currently Honorary President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Co-President of the Christian Democratic International (with Vicente Fox), and majority faction leader of the Union of the Centre (UDC).Graduated with a degree in Law, he was first elected in 1983 for the Christian Democracy party. In 1993, he was amongst the founders of the Christian Democratic Centre (CCD), which merged into UDC in 2002. In 2001, after Berlusconi's victory in the general election, Casini was chosen by the newly-formed parliament as President of the Chamber of Deputies (the Italian lower house of parliament). Up to 2006, with his Union of Christian and Centre Democrats, he was widely regarded as one of the primary members of the House of Freedoms, and sometimes spoken of as a possible successor to Berlusconi himself as leader of the coalition. However, as the campaign for the 2008 Italian elections began, Casini officially detached himself from Berlusconi, refusing to enter his 'People of Freedom' (PdL, name of the new party built on the House of Freedoms coalition), preferring to run alone. In a speech to his UDC party, Casini said that "not everyone is for sale", in a not so veiled statement about Berlusconi's political tactics. Casini ran on a purely 'centrist' platform, founding the new Union of the Centre party along with Savino Pezzotta's Rosa Bianca, and negotiating with other centre parties such as the UDEUR of Clemente Mastella. After 2008, he remained in opposition. At the 2009 Administrative elections, alliances were decided on a local bases, sometimes with Berlusconi PdL,and sometimes with the center-left Democratic Party.
Read more about this topic: Pier Ferdinando Casini
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