Oscar Luigi Scalfaro
Baron Oscar Luigi Scalfaro ['skalfaro] (born in
Novara,
September 9,
1918) is an
Italian politician and magistrate, member of the
Christian Democracy and
President of the Italian Republic from
1992 to
1999, and
senator for life.
Scalfaro was born in
Novara,
Piedmont.
He graduated in
Law from the
Catholic University Sacro Cuore in
Milan on
June 2,
1942. On
October 21,
1942 he entered the magistrature. After the end of
World War II in
1945 he became a public prosecuting attorney. In
1946 he was elected into the
Constituent Assembly and later in
1948 he became deputy in representation of the district of
Turin, being reelected ten times without gaps until
1992. In
May 25,
1992 he was elected president of the Italian Republic. He ended his mandate in 1999, and automatically became a lifetime
Senator.
In recent times, Scalfaro has been one of the leading opponents against the constitutional reform proposed by the
House of Freedoms. He is the second eldest senator in the Italian Senate, after
Rita Levi Montalcini, and he consequently took the temporary presidency of the newly-elected assembly which came out from the
2006 general election, as Levi Montalcini herself renounced to.
A staunch Roman catholic, and in the past a rather conservative and anti-communist politician, Scalfaro is in very bad terms with the former prime minister
Silvio Berlusconi, and supports the centre-left coalition that has won the political elections of 2006.
He is currently (June 2006) the chairman of the committee advocating the abrogation, in the
referendum scheduled to occur on June 25th and 26th, 2006, of the constitutional reform that was voted in 2005 by the former centre-right majority. Along with all the centre-left (and a few centre-right personalities, too) Scalfaro considers it to be dangerous for national unity and for other reasons.
During the
Second World War, in
1944, he lost his 20-year-old wife Maria Inzitari. Since, he has not been married. He has a daughter, Marianna.
