Alliance for Italy
Alleanza per l' Italia ( German: Alliance for Italy, Abbreviation: ApI or API ) is a launched in November 2009 centrist party in Italy. Founder of the party is the former mayor of the city of Rome and ex- Minister of Culture Francesco Rutelli, who had previously belonged to the Partito Democratico.
Francesco Rutelli, in the 1990s a member of the Italian Greens ( Federazione dei Verdi) and first as such green mayor of Rome had, which consists of liberal and Christian social groupings centrist party La Margherita founded in 2002, which in 2007 were new in the center-left party Partito Democratico (PD ) had risen. Within the PD Rutelli led to the centrist wing, but increasingly fell against the social democratic factions in the minority. After the election of former Industry Minister Pier Luigi Bersani as the new leader of the Democrats in October 2009 Rutelli left the party and announced their intention to establish, together with the Christian Bruno Tabacci a new party. The reason Rutelli called shift to the left within the Democratic Party, which was reflected in the victory against the Bersani supported by Dario Franceschini Rutelli.
On 11 November 2009 Rutelli presented the new Alliance for Italy, which he described as democratic, liberal and " Popolare ", ie understood in the tradition of the Italian Christian Democrats standing force for reform and as an alternative to the populist right and the social democratic left. Tabacci that had belonged until 2008 to the Christian Democrat UDC and then his own Christian Democratic Party ( Rosa Bianca ) had founded, acts as party spokesman ( portavoce ). In addition, also joined the President of the Province of Trento Lorenzo Dellai and Exministerin Linda Lanzillotta the new movement. Rutelli announced plans to seek cooperation with the also located in the Christian Democrat UDC middle of Pier Ferdinando Casini.
The selected Rutelli Party Name donated initially confusion after he had been introduced to a Christian Democratic center-right party in the political discourse in 2007 by the post-fascist Gianfranco Fini in connection with the transformation of its right-wing conservative, former fascist National Alliance. Also, in another context once rival candidate Rutelli was about a possible alliance between Rutelli and Fini, in the election for mayor of Rome, speculation, considered as a potential rival candidate and successor to Berlusconi within the center-right camp.
In the Italian regional elections on 28 and 29 March 2010, the National Alliance supported the majority election proposals Center Union under Casini and occurred only in the regions of Campania, Basilicata, Marche and Calabria with its own lists and took it as part of the center-left alliance between two and four percent of the vote.