WITH a symbolic gesture - the filling of a phial of water from the source of the River Po - Northern League leader, Mr Umberto Bossi, last night initiated three days of festivities which climax tomorrow in Venice with the "Declaration of the Independence of Padania".
This is the weekend when the Bossi bark is to become bite. The maverick senator and his Northern League have arrived at a turning point which marks the quantum leap from mid 1980s protest movement to mid 1990s secessionist party. As he prepared far his long weekend, Mr Bossi said: "I go into this . . . aware that an unstoppable wind of change has begun to blow and that history cannot be blocked by political trickery, that the political class can no longer fool themselves that they can stop this [change] by doing nothing and hoping to restore things to the way they were."
At the centre of this weekend's festivities is the 650 km long river Pa, which crosses all of Northern Italy from its source at Pian Dell Regina, high in the Piedmont hills, to the Adriatic, just below Venice. "Padania", a term coined by Mr Bossi during this year's general election campaign, takes its name from the Padano plain in the Po valley.
Northern League spokesmen say that as many as two million people will take part in more than 140 rallies along the banks of the Po as Mr Bossi completes a "march of independence", loosely based on the "salt march" of Indian pacifist Mahatma Gandhi. The League leader will travel by helicopter, car and boat along the "sacred" Po/Ganges before making a triumphal arrival in the Venice lagoon astride a catamaran.
Since founding his movement in 1984, Mr Bossi has based his political fortune on consistent harangues against a corrupt, inefficient and fiscally punitive central state, thus touching a raw nerve with northern voters who have long been frustrated by second class state services and resentful that the wealth they create is subsequently squandered on the corrupt, Mafia ridden south.
Despite limited television exposure and widespread prognostications of an electoral rout, the Northern League polled 10.1 per cent of the vote at the April general election. Until that election, however, Mr Bossi's platform had been federalism, a call for greater regional autonomy.
Far the time being, it remains unclear if his electorate want to follow him all the way to secession. One survey carried out in Milan this week showed that only 6 per cent of those contacted supported a secessionist Padania.
Formed around Italy's industrially and agriculturally richest regions - Piedmont (Turin), Liguria (Genoa), Lombardy (Milan) and Veneto (Venice) - Padania is an inexact term, since no such cultural, historical or linguistic entity exists. Even Northern League's number two, Mr Roberto Maroni, was forced to admit this week that Padania can be defined "only in socio economic parameters".
While this weekend will represent a litmus test for the Northern League, it will also testify to the strength of pro unity sentiment in Italy, since hundreds of counter demonstrations have been planned. These range from an Alleanza Nazionale rally in Milan to a Democratic Left rock concert in Mantova, and include a provocative gathering of southern mayors at Pontida, a traditional holy ground of the Northern League.
A rather more unusual pro Unity demonstration was staged last night outside the Italian parliament by porn queen Ms Eva Henger, who expressed her support far the Italian state by parading naked, her body painted in the colours of the Italian flag.