Trentino Tyrolean Autonomist Party

Background and foundation

The party was founded on 25 July 1948 as the Trentino Tyrolean People's Party (PPTT).

Between 1972 and 1976, the PPTT was represented in the Italian Senate by Sergio Fontanari.

In 1982 a split between the conservative wing, led by Franco Tretter, and the centrist wing of the party, led by longstanding leader Enrico Pruner, occurred. The first group retained the name of the party, but then changed it to Trentino Tyrolean Autonomist Union (UATT), while the latter took the name of Integral Autonomy (AI).

In 1988 the UATT and AI were merged to form the PATT.

Participation in the provincial government

In the 1988 provincial election the PATT won barely a tenth of the votes cast (9.9%), losing ground from the combined score of UATT and AI in the 1983 election (14.4%), but joined the provincial government, led by Christian Democracy (DC).

In the 1993 provincial election the party, with 20.2%, secured the best result ever for Trentino autonomists, due to the crisis of the DC. The PATT's leader, Carlo Andreotti, was President of the Province of Trento for the successive five years, at the head of a coalition composed of the PATT and the Italian People's Party, DC's successor, and some minor parties. In 1996 splinters from the PATT, led by Sergio Casagranda and Domenico Fedel (who had been more recently active with Lega Autonomia Trentino), launched a new party named Integral Autonomy (AI), which, as its namesake predecessor, represented the party's left-wing.

In the 1998 provincial election the PATT's share of the vote declined to 12.4%, due to the presence of AI (3.8%) and, especially, the success of the newly formed Daisy Civic List (22.2%). AI entered in coalition with the Daisy, while the PATT formed an alliance with the House of Freedoms and, primarily, Lega Nord Trentino for the 2001 general election: under this arrangement, Giacomo Bezzi stood as candidate in the single-seat-constituency of Lavis, but was narrowly defeated.

Alliance with Daisy and the SVP

In 2002 the PATT entered into an alliance with the Daisy-dominated centre-left coalition. Consequently, Carlo Andreotti was appointed President of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol at the head of a coalition comprising the SVP, the Daisy, the Democrats of the Left and the Greens. Contextually, the Trentino Autonomists (AT), formed by the merger of AI with the provincial section of Italian Renewal and additional PATT splinters led by Dario Pallaoro in 2000, joined forces with the PATT.

In the run-up of the 2003 provincial election Bezzi led the party into a stable alliance with the Daisy and also the centre-left at the provincial level, but Andreotti, who would serve as President of the Region until 2004, disagreed, left the party and formed Autonomist Trentino (TA). In the election, Andreotti, who ran for president for the centre-right coalition led by Forza Italia, was soundly defeated (60.8% to 30.7%) by incumbent Lorenzo Dellai (Daisy), who appointed Franco Panizza of the PATT to his government. Moreover, the PATT won just 9.0% of the vote, but TA did much worse and garnered a mere 2.2%. Two years later, Bezzi was replaced as secretary by Ugo Rossi.

After the 2006 general election, thanks to an electoral pact with the SVP and the electoral victory by the centre-left coalition The Union, the PATT was for the first time represented in the Chamber of Deputies by its former secretary Giacomo Bezzi. In 2007 the AT were formally merged into the PATT.

Continued alliance with the centre-left

In the 2008 general election the PATT formed an alliance with the Daisy Civc List and the SVP for the Senate (Sergio Muraro of the PATT was the candidate in the single-seat constituency of Pergine Valsugana), while for the Chamber of Deputies the PATT supported the SVP.

Prior to the electoral campaign, Bezzi, who was not running for re-election, announced that he was going to vote for the centre-right in the election. Also, would-be senator Muraro did not rule out the possibility of an alliance with the centre-right, if Silvio Berlusconi would have become Prime Minister again. In the election, the centre-left was for the first time defeated in Trentino and Muraro was not elected. The loss brought the PATT into a bitter turmoil. Bezzi finally left the party and formed the Popular Autonomists (AP), along with two minor regionalist parties, Autonomist Trentino and the Popular Autonomy Movement.

In the 2008 provincial election the AP supported Sergio Divina, senator and leader of Lega Nord Trentino, as candidate for president, while the PATT remained aligned with the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and Dellai's Union for Trentino (UpT). Dellai was re-elected by a landslide and the PATT gained 8.5% of the vote and three provincial deputies. The PATT took part to the new government of Dellai with two provincial ministers, Panizza and Rossi.

For the 2013 general election, the PATT formed an alliance with the SVP, the UpT and the PD. This led to the best result ever for the party in a general election: Mauro Ottobre was elected deputy in the SVP's list, which gained 4.8% in Trentino, and Panizza was elected senator in the constituency of Trento.

Leadership of the "autonomist centre-left"

In the run-up of the 2013 provincial election, Rossi of the PATT won the province's centre-left primary election.

In the provincial election, Rossi was elected President with a landslide 58.1% of the vote, while the PATT garnered 17.6% and 7 elects in the Provincial Council (plus Rossi). Bezzi, former PATT leader, stood as candidate for Forza Trentino and gained a mere 4.3% of the vote. Following the election, Rossi formed an eight-member strong government, including three ministers of the PD, two of the UpT, one of the PATT (Michele Dallapiccola) and one independent (Carlo Daldoss).

The party contested the 2014 European Parliament election in alliance with the SVP, whose list was supported also by the UpT. The list won 12.2% in Trentino.

In March 2016 the PATT will hold an important congress. Four candidates have filed to become secretary: they include outgoing secretary and senator Panizza (whose supporters notably include Rossi), the party's deputy Ottobre, Dario Chilovi (supported by Kaswalder) and Giuseppe Corona (representing the "Tyrolean" separatist wing). With Panizza as the clear favourite, Kaswalder, who increasingly represented the party's conservative wing and had taken a critical approach on Rossi's presidency. repeatedly tried to forge an agreement between the four candidates in order to have a jointly elected secretary Finally, Panizza and Kaswalder found an agreement under which Chilovi would retire his candidacy for secretary and endorse Panizza, while both camps would support Carlo Pedergnana for president. Consequently, both Chilovi and Ottobre retired from the race, but Ottobre, who was very critical of the pact, chose to run for president instead.

On congress day Panizza was voted secretary by 75% of the delegates, while Corona took 23%. Pedergnana was elected president, by beating his former ally and mentor Ottobre 59–38%. The congress confirmed the strategic alliance with the SVP, while not embracing Ottobre's and especially Corona's Tyrolean nationalism. A few days later, Pedergnana resigned, after some old photos of him doing the Roman salute and kissing pictures of Benito Mussolini were leaked. A new congress was scheduled in June: Ottobre wanted to run again, this time with Pedergnana's and Corona's support, but he finally decided to leave the party altogether. Linda Tamanini, close to Kaswalder, who was trying to keep Ottobre and the "Tyroleans" in, was elected president with 70% of the vote.

In January 2017 Kaswalder was expelled from the party, after months of tensions with the party's leadership and dissent votes in the Provincial Council.

Popular support

The electoral results of the PATT in Trentino since 1992 are shown in the table below.

Leadership