Gianfranco Blasi (born 29 May 1958) is an Italian politician, essayist, and poet who was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 2001 to 2006. A Salesian student, he was raised as a liberal Catholic and was a leader of Christian Democracy (DC), first in the party's youth wing and then at the city and provincial levels. In the 1990s, Blasi served as a regional councillor in Basilicata several times with Forza Italia (FI), the regional section of the party that he helped to co-found in 1994. He was a city councillor in Potenza and a member of Parliament with various roles as a deputy.
In 2003 and 2004, Blasi obtained national and international attention for his opposition to a nuclear waste site in Basilicata and for being wrongly charged in a local judicial investigation. In the late 2000s, he politically distanced himself from Silvio Berlusconi, citing judicial and cultural conflicts, feeling that one should defend oneself at the trial and not from being put on trial. After leaving Forza Italia, Blasi was the co-founder of several minor Southern Italian parties like Italy of the Centre (IdC) and Great South (GS) between 2008 and 2013, when he returned to the new Forza Italia.
In 2014, Blasi joined Brothers of Italy (FdI) and was instrumental in the election of the first centre-right coalition candidate as mayor of Potenza. He continued to be active in centre-right politics until 2018 and subsequently mainly focused on his literary and poetry career, some of which were published in English. In addition to his career as journalist and various roles in several companies, he became a member of the Tiberian Academy.
Early life and political career Blasi was born on 29 May 1958 in Potenza, the capital of Basilicata, a small region in Southern Italy. He obtained a from the city's commercial institute to become an accountant and programmer. During the mid-1970s, Blasi began his political career within Christian Democracy. He said that he got interested in politics since he was a teenager, first at school thanks to participatory models and then in the Catholic movement. Blasi joined the youth wing of Christian Democracy and became a party leader at the youth, city, and provincial levels.
Blasi was active within the student movement, the Salesian parish, and the party branch, an image that he likes to remember and is proud of. Around this time, he met Emilio Colombo, the only prime minister of Italy from Potenza. When Colombo (who was made senator for life in 2003) died in June 2013, he honoured him, stating that thanks individuals like Colombo, an "inestimable value will always live on in the civic consciousness of our country: a sense of state. The ability to serve institutions before oneself. This is and will remain the statesman Colombo." During his early political career, Blasi was an official of the Italian region of Basilicata and a member of the political secretariat of the presidency of the Regional Council of Basilicata's Budget Committee. From 1990 to 1994, he served as regional secretary of the trade union Italian Confederation of Trades Unions's (CISL) Public Function. As part of his formative training in politics, Blasi moved to Rome to study politics and attended the Training School in Taranto, and studied Business Organisation at the Higher School of Public Administration in Lucca.
Forza Italia In 1994, with the judicial revolution of and the resulting fall of the First Italian Republic, which he described as "a period also marked by the excessive presence of the judiciary, which became a sort of partisan arbiter of what later happened", Blasi was one of the founders, alongside other local Italian Socialist Party (PSI) members, of Berlusconi's Forza Italia. As a result, he is considered among the founders of the centre-right coalition in Basilicata. In discussing the impact of all this in Basilicata, Blasi recalled that the "acceleration toward the so-called change occurred too suddenly", arguing that "as always happens in times of transition, there was a repositioning of the ruling classes", citing as an example the fall of the fascist regime in Italy and how many "podestas then became mayors of their own towns the day after the fall of the ".
Blasi was part of Christian Democracy's thinkers who chose not to follow Mino Martinazzoli and Colombo's turn to the centre-left, recalling "the strong tensions both with my national and regional leaders of the CISL, and with my friends in the DC who chose the left-wing agreement". Blasi added that he and the co-founders of Forza Italia had "embraced the idea of a modern umbrella organisation like Forza Italia", which he described as a "secular home where liberals, Catholics, and reformist socialists could easily recognise each other". In 1995, Blasi was elected councillor of Basilicata, a position he held for two terms, also serving as vice president of the Regional Council of Basilicata and subsequently president of the Special Commission for the Reform of the Statute. In June 1999, Blasi was the centre-right coalition (Pole for Freedoms) candidate for mayor of Potenza. Although he was not elected as mayor as he finished third behind Gaetano Fierro of the Union of Democrats for Europe (UDEUR), which since February 1999 became part of The Olive Tree-led centre-left first D'Alema government, and the official centre-left coalition and Democrats of the Left (DS) candidate Prospero Bonito Oliva, he served as city councillor. Of Forza Italia as a party, he later said that it was disappointing, with some broken promises.
Member of the Chamber of Deputies In the 2001 Italian general election, Blasi was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the 22nd multi-member district of the Basilicata constituency in the proportional representation quota as part of the House of Freedoms centre-right coalition's overall electoral win. He served in this position for a single-term until 2006. In this capacity, he served as co-rapporteur for the Budget and Finance Committees in 2002, along with Giorgio La Malfa, in the investigation into the introduction of the euro in Italy, and in 2003 was rapporteur for the 2004 state budget. Blasi was the first signer of several law proposals and was a co-signer of many others.
Blasi was among the founders of the Parliamentary Association on the Principle of Subsidiarity, which aims to introduce subsidiarity into the Constitution of Italy, national legislation, regional legislation, and central and territorial public statutes. In May 2003, he and other deputies across the political spectrum had a meeting to discuss and debate politics in order to reduce the polarisation of the early 2000s. From 2003 to 2006, Blasi served as Forza Italia's national representative for Southern Italy. In 2004, he took part to the annual edition of the Rimini Meeting. Blasi was also a member of several parliamentary bodies, including the Election Committee from 13 June 2001 to 27 April 2006, the 5th Commission (Budget, Treasury, and Planning) from 20 June 2001 to 27 April 2006, and the Parliamentary Consultative Commission for the Implementation of the Administrative Reform, Pursuant to Law No. 59 of 15 March 1997 from 9 October 2003 to 27 April 2006.
In late 2003, the second Berlusconi government wanted to activate the single nuclear waste site at Scanzano Jonico in the Metaponto area, citing support from the local mayor. Blasi launched what was described as a "dramatically heartfelt" appeal to Berlusconi for the immediate revocation of the decree. Among others, his opposition to the plan received national attention. On 13 November 2003, Italy's leading news agency ANSA quoted Blasi as saying: "Besides appearing inconsistent with the value of democratic participation, it seems like a cynical and arrogant prank played on a regional community, perhaps because it is small and considered easily attackable." In a speech to the Chamber of Deputies about the issue, Blasi expressed his "firm and clear no to the government's decision", stating that he was "firmly and adamantly opposed to Scanzano's choice". Blasi's views were shared by figures like Colombo and of the opposition, such as The Daisy (DL) deputy and Legambiente founder Ermete Realacci, the Federation of the Greens (FdV) secretary Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, and Guido Tampieri, who was the Emilia-Romagna regional councillor for the environment. Ultimately, the protests were successful and the government's plans were scrapped.
Iena 2 judicial investigation In November 2004, Blasi and other local politicians across the political spectrum were involved in a judicial investigation (Iena 2), which saw the detention of some 50 individuals, as authorised by the Potenza judge of the preliminary investigation (GIP) Alberto Iannuzzi and as requested by the public prosecutors Vincenzo Montemurro and John Woodcock. Blasi denied any wrongdoing and the accusations after he was named among the suspects, and said: "The legal case in which my name is being linked to those under investigation, concerning relationships between members of the business, political, and criminal worlds of Basilicata, is paradoxical." He denounced the investigation as a "political persecution", and told ANSA: "It's unthinkable that the values of generosity and human helpfulness are turned into crimes." Similarly, Forza Italia's deputy coordinator Fabrizio Cicchitto said: "We have the impression that someone wants to reintroduce the justice system to political purposes. I know the Hon. Blasi and I am astonished by the crimes he is accused of. In the past, the Potenza Prosecutor's Office has accustomed us to fuss over the matter, which immediately received great media coverage and was subsequently foiled by the courts, given what happened in another region as well."
Prosecutors said they would ask the Italian Parliament to lift the parliamentary immunity of Blasi so that he could be arrested; however, the Chamber of Deputies unanimously rejected Blasi's arrest, citing "the irregularity of the wording of the charge against the MP Blasi" and the fact that "the Potenza Review Court has annulled most of the restrictive measures ordered by the GIP", including that of Blasi. The Basilicata regional coordination group of Forza Italia stated that this would allow Blasi to "resume, with due serenity, his commitment to the Lucanian community and the ideals and programmes of Forza Italia". According to Forza Italia, "misunderstandings and misinterpretations have led to the hypothesis of crimes to which MP Blasi, as evidenced by the report unanimously approved by both the Authorisations Committee and the Chamber of Deputies, is held completely innocent. Of this, we were fully convinced, knowing his personal history and his human, even more than political, qualities." Fellow party member Gaspare Giudice added that the unanimous vote of the Chamber of Deputies had demonstrated "the inconsistency of the accusations leveled against our friend Gianfranco Blasi" and expressed his hope that Blasi would "resume with renewed vigor his already strong political commitment to defending legality and transparency". Subsequently, first the Potenza Review Court and then Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation overturned the charges against him, and he was exonerated and his case was dismissed in 2006, as also requested by Woodcock. As a result, the website Errorigiudiziari.com considered the Blasi case a judicial error, which was placed within the context of a series of high-profile investigations by Woodcock that either resulted in the dismissal of all charges or in acquittals.
Later political career