SERGIO MATTARELLA, THE FIRST SICILIAN PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC

The 80-year-old Sergio Mattarella is the father not only of three children but also of a famous law that revolutionized the Italian electoral system in a majority sense; it takes its name from him, “Mattarellum”- He was born in Palermo on 23 July 1941 and In 1964 he obtained a summa con Laude Law Degree at “La Sapienza” the University of Rome with a dissertation on: “Public Policy Guidelines’ ‘. His father Bernardo was a member of the Constituent Assembly and more times minister. His brother Piersanti was Sicily’s president when he was assassinated by the mafia. Three years later Sergio, in 1983, was elected as Member of Parliament for the Christian Democracy Party in the western Sicily constituency. Re-elected deputy in 1987, he remained close to the party’s left trends and in particular to the secretary Ciriaco De Mita. In the same year, he was appointed Minister of Relations and confirmed in the post the following year. Mattarella also served as Minister of Defense from December 1999 to June 2001. He remained a member of the Chamber of Deputies until 2008. During his mandate, laws were enacted to abolish conscription and to turn the “Carabinieri” into an autonomous armed force. In 2011 the Parliament elected him as a judge at the Constitutional Court. Mattarella, who has a reputation for being reserved but straight-talking, is the first Sicilian to hold the office of the Italian president. He was elected as the twelfth President of the Republic on 31 January 2015. His first election was a success: he needed a two-thirds majority on the first three ballots, and he was elected on the fourth ballot with an absolute majority, following three rounds of inconclusive results. He won 665 votes of the 1,009 electors from both Houses of Parliament and regional representatives. His first statement following his election was: “My thoughts go first and especially to the difficulties and hopes of our fellow citizens.” On 29th January 2022, he has been re-elected as President of the Republic. Despite having repeatedly excluded the second term of his and had even already moved from the ”Colle”, the official seat of the Italian Presidents, the current President of the Republic was reconfirmed, for the second time in the history of Republican Italy.