Liga Veneta Repubblica

Foundation and early years

In September 1998, after some clashes with Umberto Bossi, Fabrizio Comencini, national secretary of Liga Veneta (LV) since 1994, tried to lead the party out of the Lega Nord federation. This move was opposed by Bossi's loyalists and he was finally expelled from the party and replaced by Gian Paolo Gobbo as leader of the LV.

Subsequently seven out of eight members of Liga Veneta–Lega Nord's group in the Regional Council of Veneto (Fabrizio Comencini, Ettore Beggiato, Alessio Morosin, Mariangelo Foggiato, Alberto Poirè, Michele Munaretto and Franco Roccon) left the party and launched Liga Veneta Repubblica (LVR), which was initially intended to be the legal continuation and legitimate heir of the LV. Another councillor, Adriano Bertaso of North-East Union, who had earlier left Lega Nord, joined the party for a while. Comencini's followers represented the more Venetist and separatist wing of the LV, while the people who remained in Lega Nord were mainly fiscal federalists and Padanists. The former were also keen on an alliance with the centre-right Pole of Freedoms coalition in Veneto in support of President Giancarlo Galan, with whom Comencini signed a pact in August 1999.

Despite the entity of the split among elects, most voters of the LV remained loyal to Gobbo and Bossi. In the 1999 European Parliament election the LVR won 3.5% of the vote in Veneto: a good result for a new party, but far less than the LV, which gained a disappointing 10.7% though, and far less than expected. However, the LVR had some local strongholds: San Bonifacio (20.9% over LV's 7.0% in 1998), Schio (11.8% over 11.1% in 1999), Arcole (44.1% over 6.0% in 1999), Camisano Vicentino (21.6% over 5.9% in 1999), Creazzo (15.5% over 14.7% in 1999), Chiuppano (34.8% and elected mayor in 1999), Monticello Conte Otto (14.6% over 7.2% in 1999), Resana (24.6% over 7.8% in 1999), Spresiano (62.2% over 9.1% and elected mayor in 1999) and Torri di Quartesolo (15.8% in 1999).

For the 2000 regional election the LV entered an alliance with the Pole of Freedoms that excluded the LVR. The party, whose name was changed to Veneti d'Europa, won 2.4% (0.6% under the threshold needed), due to the presence of another Venetist party, Fronte Marco Polo (1.2%), and an electoral recovery of the LV (12.0%). The name Veneti d'Europa (Venetians for Europe) was chosen as the LVR merged with Future Veneto, member of the Autonomists for Europe, a federation of splinter groups from Lega Nord.

Liga Fronte Veneto and split

In 2001 the party, at the time led by the Venetist historian Beggiato, was merged with Fronte Marco Polo into the new Liga Fronte Veneto. Giorgio Vido was elected national secretary and Comencini national president. In 2001 general election Bepin Segato, a separatist activist in jail for having opposed Italian national unity, was a party candidate for the Senate. Despite gaining more than 5.6% of the votes in Veneto (mainly disgruntled voters of Lega Nord, after the alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia) and more than 10% in several single-seat constituencies, the party was not able to elect any representative to the Italian Parliament.

In 2003 Beggiato replaced Vido as national secretary in a time when the party was not represented in the institutions and was shrinking in popular support. In 2004 Beggiato tried to lead the party into North-East Project (PNE), even if PNE leader Giorgio Panto wanted LFV members to join not as a party but as individuals. Comencini ruled out the idea, that would have meant giving up the party's identity. After a tumultuous congress, a group led by Beggiato, Foggiato and Munaretto switched to PNE, while Comencini was elected national secretary and Morosin national president.

During this time, the party did occasionally better than the LV in local elections. This was the case of Cittadella in 2002 (14.9% over 5.5%) and San Bonifacio in 2004 (17.8% over 4.7%): in both cases, LFV candidates, Massimo Bitonci and Silvano Polo respectively, were elected mayors in run-offs. Bitonci, who re-joined the LV, was re-elected in 2007, while Polo did not stand for re-election and the LFV supported the defeated centre-left candidate.

Decline and more splits

In the 2005 regional election the party supported the centre-left candidate for president, Massimo Carraro, winning only 1.2% of the vote, while PNE won 5.4% (16.1% in the Province of Treviso), and being excluded again from the Regional Council. For the 2006 general election Comencini forged an alliance with The Union coalition led by Romano Prodi, but voters seemed to not like the idea and the party stopped at 0.7%.

In the 2007 provincial election of Vicenza the LFV supported Giorgio Carollo, along with parties both from the centre-left and the centre-right: Veneto for the EPP, Italy of Values, UDEUR Populars, Christian Democracy. Carollo scored 9.9%, while the LFV took only 1.6%, compared with 2.3% of PNE and 19.0% of the LV, whose candidate Attilio Schneck was elected President by a landslide. Soon after the election the party returned to its original name, Liga Veneta Repubblica, under which it ran in the 2008 general election.

In October 2008 the LVR signed a coalition pact with North-East Project (PNE) and Venetian Agreement (IV) for the next municipal, provincial and regional elections "in order to provide an adequate representation to the Venetian people, in line with what happens in Europe, from Scotland to Catalonia, from Wales to Brittany, where federalist, autonomist and independentist parties, who respond uniquely to their territory, see their popular support increasing." However, in the 2009 provincial and municipal election the LVR chose to support the candidates of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC), having its best result in the Province of Padua (1.6%).

For the 2010 regional election, after having formed Veneto Freedom (VL) with other Venetist parties, the party finally chose to support Antonio De Poli (UDC) for President under the banner of North-East Union (UNE), along with UNE, PNE and IV. This decision caused two splits: the more independentist wing, led by Silvano Polo, joined the new Party of the Venetians (PdV) and the left-wing minority faction, led by Bortolino Sartore and Giorgio Vido, formed a new party called Liga Veneto Autonomo (LVA) in support of Giuseppe Bortolussi, the centre-left candidate. In the election the list won 1.5% of vote, with peaks of 1.9% and 1.8% in the provinces of Treviso and Belluno, and Mariangelo Foggiato (PNE) was elected to the Council. The LVA, which was able to present its list only in the Province of Vicenza, one of LVR's strongholds, won 1.1% of the vote there, that is to say a big share of the votes (1.6%) the LVR gained in 2005.

In the 2013 general election the LVR obtained 0.7% of the vote regionally, 1.2% in its stronghold of Vicenza.

We Independent Veneto

In July 2013 the LVR joined Let Veneto Decide, a loose cross-party committee for a referendum on Veneto's independence (see Venetian nationalism#Recent developments), along with Stefano Valdegamberi (the regional councillor who presented bill 342/2013 on the referendum), Venetian Independence (IV, the party which had envisioned the campaign), Veneto State (VS), Raixe Venete, Veneto First, other Venetist groups and individuals.

In March 2014 the party was a founding member of United for Independent Veneto, a more structured federation of Venetist and separatist parties, including also VS, Independent Venetians (VI) and Valdegamberi's Popular Future (FP). The coalition was later supplanted by We Independent Veneto. In July 2014 the coalition was trasformed into "We Independent Veneto" (NVI), after the entry of other parties, notably including North-East Project and Chiavegato for Independence.

After the exit of Chiavegato and his group from the alliance and their alignment with Alessio Morosin's IV, the remaining parties of NVI formed a joint list for the 2015 regional election named "Independence We Veneto with Zaia", a sort of re-edition of 2010's North-East Union, but with a separatist platform and in support of Luca Zaia, incumbent President of Veneto and candidate of Liga Veneta–Lega Nord. In the election, the list won 2.7% of the vote (0.2% more than IV) and Antonio Guadagnini of VS was elected regional councillor in the provincial constituency of Vicenza.

Popular support

The electoral results of the party in Veneto since 1999 are shown in the table below.

Leadership