Born on 23 July 1941 in Palermo, Sergio Mattarella officially began his political career in 1983, when he was elected with the Christian Democrats in the Chamber of Deputies, in the constituency of Western Sicily. For him, that was the first of seven consecutive legislatures in Parliament, interspersed with four government positions before the current position of judge of the Constitutional Court, which he has held since 11 October 2011, appointed to the parliamentary quota.
But Mattarella's political life begins much earlier, given that his father Bernardo was a leading exponent of the DC in the 50s and 60s, for whose governments he was also appointed minister several times. In the wake of his father's activity, as a boy he served in the ranks of Catholic Action student youth and graduated in Law (like all the Heads of State except Gronchi). Then, little more than 30 years old, his debut in Montecitorio, in the hottest years for his Sicily: those of the attacks on Pio La Torre and General Carlo Dalla Chiesa in 1982, but even earlier, in 1980, that of Mattarella's younger brother, Piersanti, assassinated by the mafia while he was President (also DC) of the Sicily Region.
The fight against the mafia is the workhorse of the young Christian Democrat: the first assignment received by the then secretary Ciriaco de Mita was to reclaim the Sicilian DC, in which Vito Ciancimino and Salvo Lima had a leading role at the time. In this capacity, in 1985 Mattarella promoted the formation in Palermo of a municipal council for renewal led by Leoluca Orlando (still today mayor of the Sicilian capital, for the fourth time), who had been one of his brother Piersanti's collaborators in the Region.
In 1987, on the other hand, his first position in the Government arrives: first with Giovanni Goria and then with Ciriaco De Mita he is Minister of Relations with Parliament, while in 1989 he becomes Minister of Public Education in the sixth Andreotti government. Under that mandate, the controversial reform of the radio and television system, the so-called Mammi law, accused of having benefited the dominant position of Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest. For that affair, together with other ministers of the DC left current, Mattarella resigned in 1990.
In the dramatic years of Tangentopolis (from which he was only touched but fully acquitted of the accusation of a Sicilian entrepreneur of having received 50 million lire and petrol vouchers) became deputy secretary of the DC and was re-elected to the Chamber in 1992, the year in which he also assumed the direction of the Christian Democrat newspaper "The people". In 1993 he is the author of the law that made him famous: the reform of the electoral system, nicknamed Mattarellium, which will be used in the following year's general elections but also in 1996 and 2001, before the advent - in 2005 - of the Porcellum, which was then declared unconstitutional in 2013 (by a ruling of the Consulta also voted by Mattarella) and about to be replaced by the Italicum.
In the mid-90s he was one of the proponents of the new Italian Popular Party, built on the rubble of the old DC decimated by the Mani Pulite investigation. It was precisely with the PPI led by Martinazzoli that he was re-elected to Parliament in 1994 and 1996: but the change of hands from Martinazzoli to Buttiglione, more inclined to an alliance with Berlusconi's centre-right, would determine his progressive removal.
At this point, he who was one of the most fervent supporters of the candidacy of Romano Prodi at the helm of the Ulivo, he approaches the center-left and adheres to the current which in a few years will become the party of La Margherita. In the meantime, two important government assignments arrived for him: in 1998 he was vice president of the Council of the first D'Alema government, while for a year and a half, between December 1999 and June 2001, he became Minister of Defense before the D'Alema-bis and then the Amato government.
In the general elections of 2006 he was a candidate on the Ulivo list and was elected deputy for the seventh time. In 2007 he actively participated in the establishment of the Democratic Party, of which he was one of the drafters of the founding manifesto. However, that remains his last political commitment: after the dissolution of the Chambers in 2008 he does not run again for early elections, and since 2011 he has been looking at politics from above, as guarantor of the Constitution, a role for which he is now called to become the first office of the state.
