The news had caused a moderate political earthquake in Lombardy.

After counting all the votes in the early parliamentary elections on Sunday, the electoral authority of the Ministry of the Interior announced on Monday evening that 81-year-old Umberto Bossi, founder and long-time chairman of the once separatist regional party Lega Nord, had missed re-entry into parliament.

On Wednesday it was said from the Viminale, as the Ministry of the Interior is called after its seat on one of Rome's seven hills, that Bossi had won a mandate in the Chamber of Deputies.

Matthias Rub

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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The reason for the false report, which was initially widespread, was a counting error.

When allocating list mandates, votes that go to candidates whose party or party alliance does not make it over the three or ten percent hurdle must be distributed proportionately to the other candidates whose parties and alliances actually enter parliament.

His nickname: "il senatùr"

After applying this so-called "pinball effect" enshrined in the electoral law, Bossi then received a sufficient number of votes to be elected as list leader for the centre-right alliance in his home constituency of Varese in Lombardy.

Lega leaders welcomed Bossi's re-election.

Originally from Cassano Magnago in the province of Varese, Bossi began his political career in 1987, when he was elected to the Senate for the first time – and as the first representative of his party.

Bossi's nickname "il senatùr" stems from this period, the term for senator in the Lombard dialect.

At that time, the party was still called Lega Lombarda and campaigned for the separation of the economically strong regions in the north of the country from Italy.

The Lega people chose “Padania”, after “Pianura Padana”, as the Po Valley is called in Italian, as a fantasy name for the new state they were striving for.

In the 1980s, Bossi turned the Lega Lombarda, which was called Lega Nord after it merged with other northern Italian regional parties in 1989, into a relevant party at national level.

After his election victory in 1994, Silvio Berlusconi and his newly founded Forza Italia party included the Lega Nord in his governing coalition in Rome for the first time.

Bossi took on various cabinet posts in the Berlusconi-led coalitions.

For decades he sat in both chambers of the Italian Parliament and in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where he made a name for himself through his eloquence and sharp polemics.

Since a heart attack and stroke in 2004, Bossi, who used to present himself as an energetic and athletic politician and liked to show himself publicly in a white fine-rib undershirt, has suffered from severe health problems.

After a scandal about illegal party financing, in which his son was also involved, Bossi resigned from the Lega party leadership in 2012.

In 2018 he was sentenced to 14 months in prison for embezzling party donations.

In 2013, current party leader Matteo Salvini took over the leadership of the Lega, which will be represented alongside Berlusconi's Forza Italia in the planned new government led by Giorgia Meloni's right-wing Brothers of Italy party.

Salvini had suggested on Tuesday that Bossi should be awarded a lifetime senatorship for his services during three and a half decades of political activity.

Bossi's regular mandate in the larger of the two chambers of parliament initially lasts five years.