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August 15, 2019 Antonio Rastrelli died at the age of 91, a leading exponent of the Italian Social Movement first and then of An, Undersecretary of the Treasury in the first Berlusconi government and president of the Campania Region from 1995 to 1999.

Graduated in Law, lawyer and business manager, he was the brother of father Massimo Rastrelli, a Jesuit and champion of the fight against usury. His father, Carlo, was one of the founders of Neapolitan fascism and, after World War II, deputy mayor of Naples in the Lauro junta.

Antonio began his political activity in 1948, when he joined the Italian Social Movement, of which he soon became a leader in Naples. He was also a Cisnal union leader and for years a provincial councilor and head of the MSI at the Naples City Council before being elected senator in 1979 and then re-elected in 1983, 1987 and 1992.

After the transition from the MSI to the National Alliance, in 1994, he was elected to the Chamber in the Naples-Vomero College, and appointed Undersecretary of the Treasury of the first Berlusconi government.

In January 1995 he joined the breakthrough of AN's Fiuggi and ran for election to the presidency of the Campania Region: supported by a center-right coalition he managed to win with 47.86%. In the regional elections of 2000 he ran for a new term as president of Campania, but was defeated by the center-left candidate Antonio Bassolino.

In 2001 he resigned from the Regional Council of Campania, as elected, unanimously by Parliament and on the recommendation of the President of the Republic Ciampi, a lay member of the Presidency Council of administrative justice, a position he held until 2006. In November 2007 he formalized the his move to the new political formation La Destra, led by Francesco Storace.

Bassolino: "Opponent, never enemy"
"I feel a feeling of great sadness, the news pains me deeply". Thus Antonio Bassolino, former mayor of Naples and former president of the Campania Region, commenting on the Adnkronos the death of Antonio Rastrelli, his predecessor at Palazzo Santa Lucia and with whom he challenged, winning, in the regional elections of 2000. "Politically we are always states on different, even opposite positions - Bassolino explains - he came from the Social Movement and I from the Communist Party, it was difficult to be on more different positions. And yet we have never been enemies, we have been loyal adversaries who have mutually respected each other ". With Rastrelli, Bassolino recounts, "mutual respect and a mutual feeling of personal esteem had been established for a long time now, I had been very close to him when his beloved wife died, at the time I was mayor of Naples and I I went to the church to hug him, and even a year and a half ago when brother Massimo died, pastor of the Gesù Nuovo church in Naples for many years. "