In the 2008 general election, the PdL won 37.4% of the vote, getting elected 276 deputies and 146 senators and becoming the Italian largest party. The PdL was also the first party since Christian Democracy in the 1979 general election to get more than 35% of the popular vote. On 27–29 March 2009, the new party held its first congress in Rome and was officially founded. Berlusconi was elected president, while Sandro Bondi, Ignazio La Russa and Denis Verdini were appointed national coordinators, Maurizio Lupi organizational secretary and Daniele Capezzone spokesperson. In the 2009 European Parliament election, the party won 35.2% of the national vote, returning 29 MEPs. In the big round of regional elections of 2010, the PdL retained Lombardy with Roberto Formigoni (in coalition with LN), gained Lazio with Renata Polverini (a former leader of the General Labour Union), Campania with Stefano Caldoro (a leading Socialist) and Calabria with Giuseppe Scopelliti (a former AN member). The PdL was also instrumental in the centre-right victories in Veneto and Piedmont, where two Presidents of LN, Luca Zaia and Roberto Cota respectively, were elected. Between 2009 and 2010 Gianfranco Fini, former leader of the conservative AN and President of the Chamber of Deputies, became a vocal critic of the leadership of Berlusconi. Fini departed from party's majority line on stem cell research, end of life issues, advance health care directive and immigration, but, most of all, he was a proponent of a more structured party organisation. His criticism was aimed at the leadership style of Berlusconi, who tended to rely on his personal charisma to lead the party from the centre and supported a lighter form of party, which in his mind was to be a movement-party active only at election times (as the original FI and, on some respects, parties in the United States). Although some "Finiani", such as Italo Bocchino, Carmelo Briguglio and Fabio Granata, shared Fini's views on moral issues and immigration, many others, including Andrea Ronchi and Adolfo Urso, were traditionalist. In fact most "Finiani" were Southern conservatives who opposed Berlusconi's firm alliance with LN, federal reform and Giulio Tremonti's economic policy. Fini made inroads among the liberal and centrist ranks of the former FI, but he lost the support of most leading members of the former AN, notably including Ignazio La Russa, Maurizio Gasparri and Altero Matteoli, who became close allies of Berlusconi.