The National Alliance (AN), born in 1995 from the ashes OF the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), officially ceased to exist on Sunday and this weekend will become part of the new People of Freedom (PdL) center-right party.
During AN's final party congress here, the emphasis was placed on the future and not the past, with the PdL, in the words of AN leader Gianfranco Fini, viewed as ''a project for the Italy of tomorrow''.
''Today AN ends so the PdL can be born. What will continue is our love for Italy. Our guiding light was, is and will remain our love of country and the interests of the nation,'' Fini said.
The break with the past was also underscored by Alessandra Mussolini who did not complain that no reference was made at the congress to her famous grandfather, Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, because ''he is history, we want to think about the future''.
No effort was spared at the AN congress to stress that joining with Premier Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party to create the PdL in no way meant that it would be subservient to FI, even if there was no doubt that Berlusconi would be the party leader.
Ignazio La Russa, who took charge of running AN after Fini became House speaker, said on Monday that he had ''no regrets'' that his party had ceased to exist because ''we are convinced that we are joining a new political force on AN equal footing with FI thanks to our history, our rank-and-file and our identity''.
Speaking on a morning TV talk show, La Russa added that his former party had no intention of just being a faction in the PdL because ''if that were the case we would have remained a separate party''.
Public Works Minister Altero Matteoli, one of Fini's strongest allies, said that the PdL ''will not be a monarchy'' because ''parties in which there is no internal debate have no future because those who only know how to applaud the leader have no future. There has never been any monarchical tendency in our party and with AN in the PdL this problem will not exist''.
Rome Mayor Giovanni Alemanno was concerned over the right taking a back seat to the centrist elements, especially in regard to relations with the Northern League, the PdL government ally.
''If in the new party the interests of the center are given preference to those of the right, we risk losing a lot of votes to the Northern league, and not just in the north,'' the mayor observed.
AN has traditionally been strong in central and southern Italy.
The sharpest criticism over AN dissolving into the PdL came from Francesco Storace, the former Lazio region president and ex-health minister who quit the party when it shifted to the center in order to merge with FI.
''I'd like to see what happens in two weeks' time, when after the PdL congress it becomes clear that only Berlusconi rules,'' he said in an interview published Monday in the Rome daily La Repubblica.
''When we joined the MSI as youths we dreamt of changing the world and today we realise that the world has changed us. We have left the home of the father (Mussolini) to enter the villa of the master (Berlusconi),'' Storace said.
The demise of AN and the creation of the PdL got a mixed reaction among opposition parties, with Dario Francheschini, head of the Democratic Party (PD), observing ''they remain our adversaries, but the birth of the PdL is a positive development for democracy in Italy''.
Luca Volonte', an MP for the centrist UDC Christian Democrat party, criticised Fini for defining religion in his address as a ''private matter'', which he said reflected a ''radical Masonic secular nature'' of the PdL. The Italy of Values (IdV) party of former Clean Hands magistrate Antonio Di Pietro branded the AN's final congress as a ''bonfire of hypocrisy ''
IdV Senator Stefano Pedica urged Fini not be ''subservient to Berlusconi'' and to not forget the battles AN fought with IdV for such things as cutting the cost of politics and changing the electoral law.
Berlusconi issued a statement to say that he was ''favorably impressed'' by the tone and content of Fini's address, in which the AN secretary recognised that ''the PdL has a leader and it is Berlusconi''.
In a message he sent to the AN congress, Berlusconi expressed his ''gratitude to and appreciation for a party which after a long journey allows us to achieve together a great and historic milestone''.
The three-day constituent PdL congress kicks off on Friday with an address by Berlusconi, who in all likelihood will also make the closing address after he is elected party leader, while Fini will speak on Saturday.
