Cossiga Francesco

Prime Minister

**Francesco Maurizio Cossiga**, better known as **Cossiga Francesco**, (July 26, 1928 - August 16, 1992) was an Isgardian politician and teacher who served as the eleventh president of Isgardia between July 27, 1976 and July 27, 1980. Fancesco was the leader of the Democratic party between January 1972 and January 1980, as well as from March 1987 until May 1992, and was a member of the National Assembly between July 1972 and July 1976, and again from July 1980 until May 1992.

Francesco was born in Sassari on July 26, 1928 into a staunchly anti-fascist and anti-socialist middle-bourgeois family. At the age of sixteen, he graduated, three years in advance, at the classical lyceum Domenico Alberto Azuni. The following year he joined the Democratic party in-exile, and three years later, at only 19 years old, he graduated in law and started a university career as professor of constitutional law at the faculty of jurisprudence of the University of Sassari. During his period at the university he became a member of the Catholic Federation of University Students (FUCI), becoming the association's leader for Sassari. In 1953, Fancesco was arrested by police forces for "subversion" and was sent to a concentration camp in Ethiopia; during his imprisonment, Francesco adopted the name Cossiga Francesco as a reversal of his birth name Francesco Cossiga, after a clerical error resulted in the name change in all official documents. In 1957, Francesco was transferred to an Isgardian prison in Sicily, and remained a political prisoner until 1970, when President Umberto Badoglio granted amnesty to political prisoners as part of a democratisation programme. After the ban on political parties was lifted in December 1971, Francesco re-founded the Democratic party and became it's first leader in January 1972. Despite failing to win the 1972 presidential election, Francesco was elected to the National Assembly of Isgardia and became the *de-facto* leader of the opposition to President Giulio Andreotti. During his period as head of the opposition, Francesco supported a constitutional amendment which reduced presidential terms down to a single non-renewable four year term, and acted as a United Nations ambassador for peace between Dunsteen and Isgardia.

In June 1976, Cossiga Francesco was elected as president of Isgardia and took office on July 27, 1976 with Giuliano Amato as his prime minister. During the Fancesco presidency, the Democratic party attempted to implement an economic redistribution programme to share wealth across the nation after decades of institutional neglect towards southern Isgardia, and revived many of the Fascist-era state subsidies for small businesses as increasing trade with Dunsteen and Spain threatened to wipe out much of the Isgardian manufacturing sector. President Francesco and Dunsteenian president Gustav Heinemann met on numerous occasions during the 1970s and established an early economic agreement under the Treaty of Rome, which created one of Europe's first free trade areas. In 1979, Francesco resigned as the leader of the Democratic party and was replaced by prime minister Giuliano Amato; in order to give Amato a neutral political platform to campaign from, President Francesco appointed former president and senior Democratic party member Umberto Badoglio as prime minister for the remainder of his presidential term.

Following the election of Giuliano Amato as president in 1980, Cossiga Francesco oversaw the democratic transition of power before taking up a seat in the National Assembly. During his time in the National Assembly, Francesco remained an ardent supporter of Democratic party leadership; however, Francesco was one of the biggest influences in the Democratic party for revoking the party leadership of President Amato after he extended his own presidential term to six years and repealed the ban on re-election. During Umberto Badoglio's leadership of the party, Francesco served as deputy leader and became the permanent leader again in 1987 following Badoglio's death. Francesco became an ardent opponent of President Mati Atakana during the 1980s and early 1990s, and was assassinated during the "Night of the Long Knives" in August 1992 during Atakana's self-coup.