Giovanni Leone (Italian: [dʒoˈvanni leˈoːne]; 3 November 1908 – 9 November 2001) was an Italian politician, jurist and university professor who was the president of Italy from 1971 to 1978. A founding member of Christian Democracy (DC), Leone briefly served as Prime Minister of Italy from June to December 1963 and again from June to December 1968. He was also President of the Chamber of Deputies from 1955 to 1963.
Leone was the first Italian president to resign because of a scandal. In 1978, he was accused of bribery amid the Lockheed bribery scandals; the allegations were later declared false, and he was rehabilitated.
Leone was born in Naples in 1908 to Mauro Leone and Maria Gioffredi, both from Pomigliano d'Arco, his father, Mauro Leone, was a prominent lawyer, and had participated in the foundation of the Italian People's Party in Campania. Leone grew up in Pomigliano d'Arco, where he attended the classic lyceum, graduating in 1924.
In 1929, he graduated in law from the prestigious University of Naples Federico II, with the thesis "Violation of family care obligations", which was even published in 1931. In the following year, he also obtained a degree in social and political science. During university, Leone became a member of Catholic Action (AC). After graduation, he started working in the law firm of Enrico De Nicola, also becoming a professor of criminal procedure at the University of Camerino.
During the 1930s, he became one of the most prominent lawyers and jurists in Southern Italy, teaching at the Universities of Messina, Bari and Naples. In these years, he was also elected president of the Italian section of the International Association of Penal Law, as well as a member of the executive committee.
During World War II, he became a magistrate of the military court of Naples, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the aftermath of September 1943 armistice, during the dramatic days of the Nazi occupation, he worked effectively for the release of numerous political prisoners and deserters, thus removing them from possible reprisals. In these years, thanks to a colleague, he met Vittoria Michitto, belonging to one of the best known families of Caserta, whom he married in July 1946. The couple had four sons: Mauro, Paolo, Giancarlo and Giulio, who died at the age of 4.
In 1943, along with his father, Leone was among the founders of the Christian Democracy (DC), the PPI's heir led by Alcide De Gasperi. After two years, in 1945, he was elected DC's provincial secretary for Naples, immediately becoming one of the leading figures of the party.
In 1946, Leone was among the main supporters of the "neutrality" in the 1946 institutional referendum, in which Italians voted to abolish the monarchy of the House of Savoy. In the same year, he was elected with nearly 32,000 votes to the Constituent Assembly for the constituency of Naples–Caserta. As a prominent jurist, he was appointed in the commission with the aim of drawing up the new republican constitution.
In April 1948, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies with 60,000 votes. Even as a deputy, he continued working as a lawyer and teaching at the university, considering for a long time these occupations as priority aspects of his life. Also for this reason, according to some testimonies, he often expressed the desire not to take on government positions. Being able to count on his own reliable and territorially rooted electorate, Leone practically never conducted a real party activity. He remained substantially foreign to the large and small factions in which the DC quickly split up, although he could be considered close to the party's conservative wing.
President of the Chamber of Deputies
Thanks to his super partes position, the respect of all DC's internal factions, alongside the undoubted consideration gained also from the other political forces during the works of the Constituent Assembly, in 1950, Leone assumed the position of Vice President of the Chamber of Deputies and then, from May 1955, the one of President, which he held continuously until June 1963.
"As president, he demonstrated, in addition to a strong sense of the institutions and a scrupulous respect for the rules of democratic confrontation, a remarkable ability to govern parliamentary dynamics, also mastered through that undeniable presence of spirit, contributed in making him a well-known figure in the public opinion. At the same time, he was able to gain approval for his action both within the party, which found him a reliable manager of parliamentary processes, and outside DC, among the majority's parties but also in the oppositions, which appreciated his qualities of institutional balance".
In the 1963 general election, the Christian Democrats lost almost one million votes, gaining nearly 38%, while the Italian Communist Party (PCI) arrived second with 25%. However the Italian Liberal Party (PLI) surged to 7%, their best results ever, receiving many votes from former Christian Democratic supporters, who were against Amintore Fanfani's centre-left policies. With the decline of electoral support, on 22 June 1963, the majority of DC members decided to replace Fanfani with a provisional government led by Leone.
Leone formed a one-party cabinet, composed only by DC's members and externally supported by Italian Socialist Party (PSI), Italian Republican Party (PRI) and Italian Democratic Socialist Party (PSDI). The cabinet was also known as "Bridge Government" (Governo ponte), as a transitional government, with the aim of starting a tighter cooperation with the PSI.
As prime minister, Leone had to face one of the most tragic events in Italian republican history, the Vajont Dam disaster. On 9 October 1963, a landslide occurred on Monte Toc, in the province of Pordenone. The landslide caused a megatsunami in the artificial lake in which 50 million cubic metres of water overtopped the dam in a wave of 250 metres (820 ft), leading to the complete destruction of several villages and towns, and 1,917 deaths. In the previous months, the Adriatic Society of Electricity (SADE) and the Italian government, which both owned the dam, dismissed evidence and concealed reports describing the geological instability of Monte Toc on the southern side of the basin and other early warning signs reported prior to the disaster.
Immediately after the disaster, government and local authorities insisted on attributing the tragedy to an unexpected and unavoidable natural event. However, numerous warnings, signs of danger, and negative appraisals had been disregarded in the previous months and the eventual attempt to safely control the landslide into the lake by lowering its level came when the landslide was almost imminent and was too late to prevent it. The communist newspaper L'Unità was the first to denounce the actions of management and government. Leone accused the PCI of political profiteering from the tragedy, promising to bring justice to the people killed in the disaster. However, a few months after the end of his premiership, he became the head of SADE's team of lawyers, who significantly reduced the amount of compensation for the survivors and ruled out payment for at least 600 victims.
In December 1963, after only five months of government, when the congress of the PSI authorized a full engagement of the party into the government, Leone resigned and Aldo Moro, the secretary of the DC and leader of the more leftist wing of the party, became the new prime minister, ruling Italy for more than four years.
In August 1964, President Antonio Segni suffered a serious cerebral hemorrhage while he was working at the presidential palace; he only partially recovered and decided to resign. Leone was selected as the DC's official candidate for the presidency, but Fanfani decided to run against him. However, neither Fanfani nor Leone succeeded in being elected, in fact, during the 1964 presidential election, the social-democratic leader Giuseppe Saragat succeeded in gaining the majority of votes.