Between 1990 and 1991 he was Minister of Education in the sixth Andreotti government
Gerardo Bianco died in Rome, due to a sudden worsening after an operation he had undergone. She was 91 years old. It was to break the news Pierluigi Castagnetti on Twitter: “Tonight Gerardo Bianco passed away, one of the historical leaders of the Christian Democratslater merged into Popular Partyof which he was the first secretary, as well as founder of the Olive Tree. It is said that mourning someone who has disappeared is mourning oneself: and today it is exactly like this for me, because Gerardo Bianco was a piece of my personal and political life. He liked to say that he had adopted me politically when I was in shorts, and technically it was false, but only for the detail of clothing: I was admitted to his court at fifteen, and it was a school of life and civil commitment incomparable and without any comparison with any other party and current history”.
Life and political commitment
Death White: Mattarella, loyal servant of institutions
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, learned with sadness the news of the death of Gerardo Bianco, a loyal servant of the institutions, a passionate politician, rich in culture and humanity.
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Born in Campaniain Guardia Lombardi, in the province of Avellino, on September 12, 1931won one Scholarship at the Augustinianum College of theCatholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milangraduated in classic letters in Parma and became university professor of history of the Latin language and Latin literature at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Parma. As a young man he was active in the Italian Catholic University Federation (FUCI).
Long-time politician, Bianco was deputy in the Chamber between 1968 and 2008 in 9 legislatures (V to XV), 7 of which from 1968 to 1994 with the Christian Democrats, for which he was provincial secretary of Avellino, head of the scientific research sector and of the Studies Office. He was also secretary of the Italian popular party and president of the former parliamentarians association.
Always great scholar, Latinist, was co-director of the Horatian Encyclopedia at the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia. Considered great southernerwas president of the National Association for the interests of Southern Italy, founded in 1910. Always considered theman of culture of the “White Whale” (as the Christian Democrats were called) engaged above all in the context ofpublic ethics.
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.
In 1994, following the end of the Christian Democrats, overwhelmed by the investigation of Clean hands and from Mafia trial against Giulio Andreotti, adheres to 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.
The clash with Rocco Buttiglione
In the 1995 lined up against the right tack of Rocco Buttiglione, secretary of the Italian People’s Party, which on March 8 had decided to ally with the Silvio Berlusconi’s Pole of Freedoms on the occasion of the regional elections of that year, 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 impossibility of forming alliances with the ex-missini of the National Alliance (AN), accepting de facto the support of the National Alliance in the second round of the administrative 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 healso much so that they participated separately in the regional elections: the wing of the party faithful to Buttiglione’s social conservative line presented the common lists with Forza Italia and CCD in all 15 regions called to vote, with the denomination of “Forza Italia – the Pole Popolare”, while the Christian-social one 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 “Popular” with a new symbol: a white banner with the profile of a shield drawn on it, whose slogan adopted by the Popolari was “the shield is there, 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 that of Bianco retains the name of the party (Italian People’s Party) while that of Buttiglione maintained the historical symbol (the crusader shield), with which in July it gave life to the United Christian Democrats.
White led the party for three years, contributing in a decisive way to the birth of the Olive tree and to the election of the Roman Catholic Prodi to the office of Prime Minister. After the general elections of 1996, in January 1997 he left the secretariat of the PPI and was appointed president of the party, a position 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 Partyfrom August to September 1995 and from October 1999 to April 2000.
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.
In November 2004 he founded, together with the parliamentarians Alberto Monticone and Lino Duilio, the Popular Italy movement – Movement for Europe, which, although not a party, proposes to restore an autonomous organized presence to democratic Catholics in Italy in order 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 member of the Ulivo parliamentary group, to then communicate to the chambers (on 15 February 2008) through the reading of a letter that aroused the applause of the entire parliament, of not join the PD and switch to the mixed group.
With his Italia Popolare movement, and together with Savino Pezzotta and Bruno Tabacci, he gave life to the centrist project of Pink for Italy, party free from the poles and of Catholic inspiration.
He is elected president of the National Association of former MPs which has over 1500 deputies from the mandate of each political alignment, a position he still holds. In 2011 he published “The White Whale. The last battle 1990-1994” and in 2012 “The Parable of the Olive Tree. 1994-2000”.
The memory of Franceschini
“Gerardo Bianco was a free, cultured, courageous, good man. Without him the Ulivo would not have been born and he suffered that this was not fully recognized in him. It was ancient and modern at the same time, custodian of the nobility of politics but capable of understanding the new. One of the greats of the Christian Democrats. For me a friend and a teacher. Hi Gerardo”. These are the words of the democratic senator and former minister of culture, Dario Franceschini.
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