Former foreign and defence
minister Antonio Martino will be the centre right's candidate to
succeed Giorgio Napolitano as Italian president, ex-premier and
opposition Forza Italia (FI) leader Silvio Berlusconi said after
an FI meeting Wednesday.
He is the product of an unexpected deal between FI and a
junior government partner, the New Centre Right, which split
from FI to join the majority centre-left Democratic Party in a
left-right executive last year.
Messina-born economist Martino, 72, was the second
signatory of FI on its triumphant launch in 1994.
He was foreign minister for Berlusconi in 1994 and the
media magnate's defence minister during his third term from 2001
to 2006.
Martino, a lifelong Liberal, is the son of Gaetano Martino,
former Foreign Minister and prominent member of the late Italian
Liberal Party (PLI).
In the mid 1980s he was unsuccessful candidate for the post
of PLI secretary.
Since 1992 and for many years, Martino has been a professor
of Economics in the Political Science Department at the LUISS
University of Rome (he is currently on parliamentary leave).
He is the author of 11 books and over 150 papers and
articles on economic theory and policy and has been a frequent
contributor to Italian and international magazines and
newspapers (the Berlusconi daily Il Giornale, for example), as
well as Italian and international television and radio programs.
In 1988-90, Martino was President of the Mont Pelerin
Society, an international society of classical liberals, founded
in 1947 by Nobel Prize Winner Friedrich A. Hayek.
In the Nineties, he wrote a book, Stato Padrone (The State
As Boss), where he explains his free-market ideas.
He is Secretary of the Scientific Committee of the
Italy-USA Foundation.
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