Farewell to Arnaldo Forlani, greatest exponent of the Christian Democracy

Farewell to Arnaldo Forlani, greatest exponent of the Christian Democracy

Goodbye to Arnaldo Forlani. The former Christian Democrat leader died in his home in Rome at almost 98 years of age.
He was born in Pesaro on 8 December 1925. He was one of the mleading exponents of the Christian Democrats, a high-ranking politician who held various top positions not only as secretary of the White Whale but also in the government.

After having been Amintore Fanfani's main collaborator in the political movement for many years “New Chronicles”, he abandoned it at the beginning of the eighties and gave life to the current with Antonio Gava and Vincenzo Scotti “Popular Action” (or “Big Center”) at the end of that decade. He was president and vice-president of the Council, minister of foreign affairs, defense and state investments. He was secretary of the Christian Democracy in the four-year period 1969-1973 and subsequently in the three-year period 1989-1992, the years of the Caf, the acronym that journalistically indicated the triangle of political power constituted by Forlani together with Giulio Andreotti and Bettino Craxi.

Beyond the 'gossips' in the 1976 Forlani is appointed Foreign Minister and in 1980, following the victory of Flaminio Piccoli's moderate wing in Congress, he becomes prime minister.

During his government, Pope John Paul II was subjected to an attack by Alì Agca, while the DC lost the referendum on abortion and Forlani was forced to resign after the scandal of the P2 lodge broke out because it was discovered that some of his ministers part. 1982 marks another congressional defeat for Forlani who loses the support of Fanfani, supporter of the winner Ciriaco De Mita. These are the years of the rise of Bettino Craxi's PSI as prime minister, of which Forlani is vice-president while, on the internal front, he promotes a new centrist Christian Democratic current, the Popular Alliance".

In 1989 the XVIII Congress of the DC was celebrated, the last one which saw the election of Forlani as secretary with 85% of the votes. A victory decided at the table, or rather at the table during a dinner held in Cirino Pomicino's villa on the Appia Antica. Here the leaders of the DC, after an interminable "fireplace", converge on Forlani as the sole candidate of all the currents.

In the European elections of the same year, the DC obtained 32,9%, regaining the primacy lost in 1984 and, shortly thereafter, the Caf was born, the political alliance between Craxi, Andreotti and Forlani himself, aimed at securing the majority of the five-party party and strengthen relations with the PSI. An attempt that clashes with the complex political landscape marked by the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the first successes of the Northern League, Mario Segni's referendums to change the electoral law. But what shocked the government above all was the entry of the communists in Palermo into the council led by the Christian Democrat Leoluca Orlando who, shortly thereafter, he left the DC to found the 'La Rete' movement.

The end of the First Republic is near and Tangentopoli is upon us. Forlani, at the end of 1991, announced a Milano the national programmatic conference of the DC in which it warns that the system is collapsing and identifies possible solutions to avert the crisis. He proposes the introduction of constructive no-confidence and a reform of the proportional electoral law that provides for a 'majority corrective'. During his speech he proudly claims the glorious history of the party: "We will not be the ones – he says – to fold the flag of the DC. The flag of Luigi Sturzo, of Alcide De Gasperi, of Aldo Moro. As we received it from them, so we pass it on to young people. We do not have to change our symbols or deny our history. Not out of party pride, rhetorical or misunderstood, but because Italy was saved with the DC. With the DC Italy has grown, with the DC we will still defend the unity of the nation and its freedom".

The following year the Mani Pulite investigation began and, in the political elections of 5 April, the DC lost 5% but Forlani's biggest personal defeat came in May, during the vote for the President of the Republic. In those days he says: “If I am not elected president it will be the end of the First Republic.” A premonitory phrase that preludes his withdrawal in the race for the Quirinale which ends on May 16, at the sixth ballot, when he only needed 29 votes to be elected.

His political career ended with the start of the Enimont trial in which he was accused and for which he was sentenced to 2 years and 4 months in prison for illicit financing. Sentence served with probationary assignment to the social service and expiated by collaborating with Caritas of Rome.

“Bettino went to Hammamet. Everyone has their own character. Not everyone has the Socratic vocation to drink hemlock even knowing they have been unjustly convicted.", Forlani will later say who, on another occasion, will admit that on Tangentopoli “We didn't react as we should have. We had a complex of awe towards the judiciary and justice. Even though the history of Christians began with a trial and a death sentence that cut history in two".

What is certain is that from that period the Italians above all remember the interrogation in which the then prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro presses him with continuous questions to make him contradict himself and he stammers, sweats and defends himself by placing all the responsibility on the treasurer, Saverio Citaristi.