Best wishes, Senatur. By Paola Sacchi
For his 80th birthday, which he will turn tomorrow, Sunday 19 September, Umberto Bossi returns to his Pontida. Although in video call from the gathering of the historical leaguers with which the former minister Roberto Castelli intends to pay homage to the Senatur on the “sacred meadow”.
Bossi, returned to Senatur in name and in fact, after the election at Palazzo Madama in 2018, called the Senatur because he was the first senator of the Northern League in 1987, will celebrate his birthday at home, in Gemonio (Varese), with the wife Manuela Marrone (founder with him and Giuseppe Leoni, the first deputy of the Carroccio, of the Lombard League that federated all the Leagues) and children.
But his 80 years will be a return to the future, starting from the origins, because the old lion promises that he will soon return to Rome, to his seat as senator.
Founder and president for life of the Northern League, despite all the ailments and “messes” of the physicist, as he calls them, the first illness of 2004 did not knock him down, after which, albeit physically tried, I return as Minister of Reforms for Federalism in the government of Silvio Berlusconi.
The illness of two years ago did not stop him, due to a domestic accident, and the subsequent, very painful, outburst of Sant’Antonio, after which for the establishment of the government of Mario Draghi, in which the League of Matteo Salvini, I return to the Senate and announce: “I trust Draghi and I will support him in the future”.
Bossi and a lifestyle, that of the challenge, even to his own body. Last September 15 was 25 years since his proclamation of the “Independence of Padania”, the so-called secession (which, however, “I threatened to have Devolution”, he told the reporter years later, on the sidelines of one of the first interviews for Panorama, after the disease of 2004).
A lot of water has passed under the bridges of the “Dio Po” and very quickly in years of turbulent political upheavals, but if one goes to hear that famous speech of his, in Venice, in Riva degli Schiavoni, one finds passages that are still current today, such as, for example, the need to reform justice, with the election of magistrates by the people, as well as the need “for the peoples to make their voices heard and respect their rights”.
Between historical research on the period of the ancient Romans in his Lombardy, meetings with old friends like “Ginetto” in Pecorara (Piacenza) with the former minister Giulio Tremonti, and above all the permanent, fixed political interest, the Senatur has spent these last two years in Gemonius.
“Politics is my real medicine”, he told us when we interviewed him after his 2004 illness in his home in Gemonio, a villa where there is nothing luxurious, full of symbols, like wooden sculptures of the Sun of the Alps, photos and memories of his Northern League creature.
Bossi revolutionized the language of politics, bringing the voice of the common man, that of the street and the bar, into the Roman palace. Bossi could be defined as the exact opposite of today’s political correctness.
But those who have not known “L’Umberto” do not know that they can also recite Leopardi’s verses by heart or quote you Shakespeare’s works.
With a political issue always in mind: the North, which should never be neglected, cannot do it without the development of the South. And this contrary to the secessionist label sewn on it.
The need for the “North-South connection” was at the center of the interview he gave in recent months, for his return to Rome, accompanied by his son Renzo and his historic spokesperson Nicoletta Maggi, to Lanfranco Palazzolo for Radio Radicale. By “thieving Rome”, as he said to the same reporter, he has always meant that “central power, of which the South itself is a victim”.
Best wishes, Senatur.
