Casa delle Liberta

House of Freedoms (CDL)

   The electoral alliance formed by Silvio Berlusconi prior to the 2001 general elections, the CDL unifies the principal parties of the political right. These are Forza Italia, the Alleanza Nazionale/National Alliance (AN), the Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e di Centro/ Union of Christian Democrats and the Center (UDC), and the Lega Nord/Northern League (LN). A number of other small center-right parties are also represented: The Partito Repubblicano Italiano/ Republican Party (PRI), with its long history, but nowadays negligible public support, is the most significant of these. Forza Italia is by far the largest party in terms of popular support: It has consistently obtained over 25 percent of the popular vote since Berlusconi entered politics in 1994. The parties of the CDLformed a government, under Berlusconi’s leadership, in May 2001 and governed until it was narrowly defeated in the elections of April 2006. The government, despite its large parliamentary majority, was somewhat unstable, with the rifts between the UDC and the League being particularly ferocious. The centerpiece of the CDL’s program, a major revision of the Constitution, was finally approved after five years of wrangling within the coalition, but was then rejected in a referendum in June 2006.

   See also Bossi, Umberto; Casini, Pier Ferdinando; Fini, Gianfranco.