Mariastella Gelmini
Minister of Regional Affairs and Autonomies
In office
13 February 2021 – 22 October 2022
Prime MinisterMario Draghi
Preceded byFrancesco Boccia
Succeeded byRoberto Calderoli
Minister of Education, University and Research
In office
8 May 2008 – 16 November 2011
Prime MinisterSilvio Berlusconi
Preceded byGiuseppe Fioroni
Succeeded byFrancesco Profumo
Member of the Senate
Assumed office
13 October 2022
ConstituencyLombardy
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office
28 April 2006 – 13 October 2022
ConstituencyLombardy 2 (2006–2018)
Desenzano del Garda (2018–2022)
Personal details
Born (1973-07-01) 1 July 1973
Leno, Brescia, Italy
Political partyFI (1994–2009)
PdL (2009–2013)
FI (2013–2022)
Action (since 2022)
SpouseGiorgio Patelli (since 2010)[1]
ChildrenEmma Patelli[2]
Alma materUniversity of Brescia
ProfessionLawyer

Mariastella Gelmini (born 1 July 1973) is an Italian politician and attorney (specialised in administrative law). She served as Italian Minister of Education in the Berlusconi IV Cabinet until 16 November 2011. She served as minister of Regional Affairs and Autonomies in the Draghi Cabinet from 2021 to 2022.

Career

Berlusconi with FI's leaders in the Parliament, Mariastella Gelmini and Anna Maria Bernini.

Member of the Forza Italia political movement of Silvio Berlusconi since its foundation in 1994, during the same year she became chairperson of the "Azzurri" club in Desenzano del Garda settling the first representation of Forza Italia in the Province of Brescia.

In 1998 she was the first elected in the administrative poll in Desenzano del Garda and became the president of the city council until 2000, in which year a motion of no confidence against her eventually passed.[3]

Gelmini passed her bar exam in 2001 in Reggio Calabria, far away from her home town and the university where she graduated, as the academic standards in that city were low and pass rate suspiciously high.[4]

In 2002 she was elected as councillor of the Province of Brescia. During her term in office she devised the "Piano Territoriale di Coordinamento Provinciale", by virtue of which the environmentally protected areas of Parco della rocca e del sasso di Manerba, Parco delle colline di Brescia and Parco del lago Moro were established.

In 2005 she was elected as member of the regional council of Lombardy resulting the most voted candidate among the Lombard constituencies. After this electoral success, she became Forza Italia's political chief in Lombardy, becoming a coordinatore regionale.

In 2006 Mariastella Gelmini was elected as member of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Italian Parliament.

On 18 November 2007, she was in Piazza San Babila in Milan when Silvio Berlusconi announced the birth of The People of Freedom political movement and subsequently she became a member of the founding committee of the party. Since 2008 she has served in the Italian Government as Minister of Education in the Berlusconi IV Cabinet. In the same year she was re-elected in the Chamber of Deputies.

On 20 July 2022, she left Forza Italia after the confidence vote for the Draghi government failed to pass and the party choice to abstain.

Critics

In October 2008 demonstrations took place across Italy against the school reform proposed by Gelmini. In 2009 the reform was approved.[5][6] On 8 October 2010 further demonstrations by students occurred in all the major Italian cities against Gelmini's recent reforms.[7] On 14 December 2010, when Gelmini's school budget cuts law was enacted, millions of students expressed their contempt, resulting in more than 20 million in damages to the capital, Rome.[6]

Controversies

On 23 September 2011 she attracted widespread criticism for a statement released on the Education ministry website, with regard to the breakthrough at the Gran Sasso laboratory in Abruzzo, Italy, where neutrinos were recorded at a speed greater than the speed of light. The statement wrongly declares that the Italian Government had contributed to building a tunnel between the Gran Sasso National Laboratory and CERN in Switzerland. Such a tunnel does not exist. The two locations are approximately 750 km apart. This statement caused controversy both in and outside Italy, and spawned a wave of jokes on the Internet making fun of the announcement.[8] Gelmini defended herself saying that her declaration referred to the tunnel used only to send the first flux of neutrins; Giovanni Bignami, president of "Istituto nazionale di astrofisica", defended Minister's statement.[9]

Electoral history

Election House Constituency Party Votes Result
2006 Chamber of Deputies Lombardy 2 FI –[lower-alpha 1] check Elected
2008 Chamber of Deputies Lombardy 2 PdL –[lower-alpha 1] check Elected
2013 Chamber of Deputies Lombardy 2 PdL –[lower-alpha 1] check Elected
2018 Chamber of Deputies Desenzano del Garda FI 77,534 check Elected
2022 Senate of the Republic Lombardy A-IV –[lower-alpha 1] check Elected
  1. 1 2 3 4 Elected in a closed list proportional representation system.

First-past-the-post elections

2018 general election (C): Lombardy — Desenzano del Garda
Candidate Coalition or Party Votes %
Mariastella Gelmini Centre-right coalition 77,534 51.6
Luca Lorenzo Castigliego Five Star Movement 31,958 21.3
Maria Chiara Soldini Centre-left coalition 30,743 20.5
Simone Zuin Free and Equal 3,520 2.3
Chiara Violini CasaPound 1,993 1.3
Sara Prandini The People of Family 1,526 1.0
Annalisa Baldrati Power to the People! 988 0.7
Others 1,848 1.3
Total 150,110 100.0

References

  1. ↑ "La Gelmini sposa Giorgio Patelli. Pubblicazioni affisse in Comune". ecodibergamo.it (in Italian). 12 January 2010. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
  2. ↑ "Fiocco rosa all'Istruzione. Nata figlia della Gelmini". ilgiornale.it (in Italian). 10 April 2010. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
  3. ↑ Comune di Desenzano del Garda, ed. (14 October 2009). "Delibera del Consiglio Comunale n. 33 del 31/03/2000". Retrieved 14 October 2009.
  4. ↑ "Notes on a scandal". Nature. 471 (7337): 135–136. March 2011. Bibcode:2011Natur.471R.135.. doi:10.1038/471135b. PMID 21390084.
  5. ↑ "Protests over Italy school reform". BBC News. 29 October 2008. Retrieved 29 July 2010.
  6. 1 2 Krause-Jackson, Flavia; Lorenzo Totaro (30 October 2008). "Italian School Protest Draws Thousands; Paralyzes Central Rome". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 3 November 2012. Retrieved 29 July 2010.
  7. ↑ "L'Unità". www.unita.it (in Italian). Retrieved 29 September 2023.
  8. ↑ "La scoperta del Cern di Ginevra e dell'Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare è un avvenimento scientifico di fondamentale importanza". Italian Ministry of Education. 23 September 2011. Archived from the original on 25 September 2011. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
  9. ↑ ""Tunnel tra il Cern e il Gran Sasso"Gaffe della Gelmini, risate sul Web". lastampa.it. 24 September 2011.
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