Popular Republican Movement
Popular Republican Movement Partito della Ricostruzione Nazionale | |
|---|---|
 | |
| President | Luciano Pella (first) Antonella Ferramonti (last) |
| Founded | July 24, 1972 |
| Dissolved | April 20, 2009 |
| Merged into | United National Party |
| Headquarters | Aquinas, Marirana |
| Ideology | Authoritarianism National conservatism Neoconservatism Neoliberalism (after 1980) |
| Political position | Far-right |
| National affiliation | Convergence for Freedom |
| Colours | Blue, red, white |
The Party of National Reconstruction (Etrurian: Partito della Ricostruzione Nazionale; PRN) was a far-right political party that existed in Marirana from 1972 to 2009. Between 1972-1988 the party functioned as the official party of the civic-military dictatorship where it provided three presidents - Luciano Pella, Emilio Amato and Ignazio Antoniotto.
The PRN was created in 1972 in order to provide a civilian political apparatus for the government to exercise its power through. Its ideology was determined by right-wing politician Luciano Pella who envisioned the party as a conservative, corporatist and authoritarian organisation with strong militarist overtones. Pella endorsed the dual rule by military officials and civilian technocrats as indicative of the "national-corporate state".
Despite the party's ideological hegemony within the regime it was dependent on the military and so displayed little autonomy from the policies of the Standing Committee of Armed Forces Command. Under the leadership of Pella owing to divisions within the SCARFC and the weak leadership of Umberto D'Aloia the presidency and thus the party were able to effectively shape public affairs; however the rise of Vincenzo Rustichelli and the replacement of Pella with Emilio Amato led to the party to become an extension of the military leadership. From 1980 onwards the party dropped its corporatist ideology instead embracing neoliberalism and marketisation of the economy.
In 1985 after the forced removal of Rustichelli the regime became increasingly dominated by president Ignazio Antoniotto, a technocrat who had overseen the liberalisation of the economy in his role as Minister of Public Credit. Antoniotto began talks with opposition leaders that saw the regime give way to democratic elections, as well as shifting the party from one supportive of authoritarianism to {{wp|neoconservatism}. In the 1987 election the party backed Francesco Boselli for the presidency, but lost to an overwhelming margin against Coalition for Democratic Action candidate Oliviero Michelozzi.
The PRN would decline by 1993 to become a third party within the Mariranan political sphere as it faced competition on the right from the newly formed Pole of Good Government led by Alfonso Hatoyama. In 2000 the PRN joined with the Pole and the Family First Party to create the Convergence for Freedom, a right-wing political coalition with backed the winning candidacy of Hatoyama in the 2003 election. The PRN entered government but was locked out of some of the most senior cabinet positions due to their association with the former civic-military regime.
The PRN opposed the impeachment of Hatoyama in 2006 and in 2008 where able to get their leader, Antonella Ferramonti, nominated as the CL candidate in the 2008 presidential election. The PRN however continued to decline in votes in the 2008 legislative elections and in 2009 agreed to merge with the Pole of Good Government to form the United National Party. An extremist wing of the party rejected the merger and formed the more far-right Traditionalist Alliance.