Arnaldo Forlani

Arnaldo Forlani (8 December 1925 – 6 July 2023) was an Italian politician who served as the prime minister of Italy from 1980 to 1981.

He also held the office of deputy prime minister, minister of foreign affairs, and minister of defence.

Forlani was born on 8 December 1925, in Pesaro, Marche.

As a youth he played as a midfielder for Vis Pesaro, in the Serie C of the Italian soccer league.

In 1948, after getting a degree in law at the University of Urbino and being elected comunal and provincial councilor, Forlani began his political career, holding the position of provincial secretary of Christian Democracy (DC) for Pesaro.

In 1954 he became a member of the central committee of Christian Democracy, as member of the right-wing faction.

The following year, Forlani became director of the party's section Studi, Propaganda e Stampa (S.P.E.S).

In the 1958 Italian general election, Forlani was elected in the Chamber of Deputies for the first time.

Forlani soon became one of the closest collaborators of Amintore Fanfani, as an exponent of the Nuove Cronache DC current, of which Forlani became its number two in 1959.

In 1962, he was elected national vicesecretary of Christian Democracy, under Aldo Moro's leadership.

When Mariano Rumor became Prime Minister in December 1968, he appointed Forlani as Minister of Public Shares and in August 1969 he became Minister for the Relations with the United Nations, in the Rumor's second cabinet.

He led the DC party on two occasions: between 1969 and 1973, and between 1989 and 1992.

He held this position for seven years, until 1969, under the secretariat of Mariano Rumor and Flaminio Piccoli.

In September 1969, in San Ginesio he stipulated, together with Ciriaco De Mita, the "Pact of San Ginesio" to lead the Christian Democracy party, which materialized when two months later, on 9 November 1969, Forlani became Secretary of the DC and De Mita, its vice-secretary.

Forlani assumed the leadership of the party in a moment of social instability provoked by the mobilizations in the universities and factories, for which he drafted the Preambolo, to ask the Italian Socialist Party to be part of a center-left government in order to break all relations with the communists in the municipal administrations and the trade unions.

A member of the right-wing faction of the Christian Democracy (DC) party, Forlani was one of the most prominent Italian politicians from the 1970s to early 1990s.

The DC's comfortable victory in the regional elections of 1970, with 37% of the vote nationwide and victory in all regions except three, did not allow Forlani to achieve that DC's candidate for the presidential elections the following year, Amintore Fanfani, gain enough confidence of the Chamber of Deputies.

Forlani's second candidate was Aldo Moro, but also this nomination was rejected by the Parliament.

At the end, the DC proposed Giovanni Leone, former Prime Minister and long-time President of the Chamber of Deputies, who was elected with the support of the neo-fascist Social Movement.

In the snap general elections of 1972, which took place on 7 May, the advance of the right in the country was stopped, remaining stable with around 38% of the votes.

His former mentor, Amintore Fanfani, succeeded Farloni as secretary of the DC in the 1973 party's Congress.

Between 1974 and 1976, Forlani was Minister of Defence.

Three years later, in 1976, Farloni tried to regain the party's secretariat as representative of the moderate internal current against the pacts with the Communist Party, but was defeated by Benigno Zaccagnini, who represented the more left-wing bloc.

When the Republicans left Moro's cabinet in 1976, no possibilities of a new government remained, and an early vote was called.

After the election, which saw a great success of the Communist Party, Andreotti became the new Prime Minister and Forlani was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The reasons of this important nomination were firstly the necessity to recover a climate of unity in the party after the congressional divisions and secondly the opportunity, in a world still marked by the Cold War, to allocate foreign policy to a clearly anti-communist personality, as Forlani was, able to calm the European and U.S. partners.

During his ministry, Forlani strongly supported the European integration process, and the adhesion of Portugal to the European Economic Community.

Forlani's permiership, which lasted less than a year, was strongly marked by the 1980 Irpinia earthquake and the P2 lodge scandal, the latter causing his resignation in June 1981.

In 1980, Forlani was among the main sponsor of Flaminio Piccoli in the party congress.

Piccoli was elected Secretary at the head of a centre-right majority.

Due to his fundamental role in Piccoli's election, Forlani was appointed Prime Minister of Italy in October, leading a centre to centre-left coalition with PSI, PSDI and PRI.

During his premiership, Forlani had to face also the Irpinia earthquake, a strong shock, that was centered on the village of Conza in Campania, and left at least 2,483 people dead, at least 7,700 injured, and left 250,000 homeless.

Forlani's government spent 59 trillion lire on reconstruction, while other nations sent contributions.

West Germany contributed 32 million United States dollars (USD) and the United States US$70 million.

Of the billions of lire that were predestined for aid to the victims and rebuilding, the largest part disappeared from the earthquake reconstruction funds in the 1980s.

Of the $40 billion spent on earthquake reconstruction, an estimated $20 billion went to create an entirely new social class of millionaires in the region, $6.4 billion went to the Camorra, whereas another $4 billion went to politicians in bribes.

Only the remaining $9.6 billion a quarter of the total amount, was actually spent on people's needs.

In 1981, together with Bettino Craxi and Giulio Andreotti, he promoted the Pentapartito, the political coalition between the three major Italian parties that ruled Italy between 1981 and 1991.

At the time of his death in 2023, he was both the oldest living and the longest-lived Italian prime minister.

However, in the early 1990s a major corruption scandal emerged.