Eleventh President of the Italian Republic, from May 15, 2006 to January 14, 2015, Giorgio Napolitano, born June 29, 1925 in Naples, died on September 22 at the age of 98, according to an announcement made in a press release by the Presidency of the Italian Republic. advice. From the heights of the Quirinal, seat of the presidency, he dominated both the city of Rome and the political life of the country. He accompanied, sometimes organizing them, the transformations while five Presidents of the Council succeeded one another at the Chigi Palace, seat of the Council Presidency: Romano Prodi (2006-2008), Silvio Berlusconi (2008-2011), Mario Monti ( 2011-2013), Enrico Letta (2013-2014) and finally Matteo Renzi until he decided to hand over, during the first days of 2015.
From an institutional mandate with more symbolic than real power, he was able to provide a moral magisterium at a time when the financial crisis, from 2008, and the sexual escapades of Silvio Berlusconi threatened to permanently ruin the reputation of the Peninsula.
A man of old-fashioned and sometimes pompous language, an intellectual respected by his peers, passionate about theater and literature, in his youth he became close to Neapolitan communist circles after having briefly flirted with fascist-inspired movements. Once peace returned, he joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and became national secretary for the provinces of Naples and Salerno. A law graduate, author of a thesis on the “failed development” of the Mezzogiorno, he was elected deputy for the first time in 1953 – a mandate he held until 1996.
At the same time, he rose through the ranks of the PCI, then led by Palmiro Togliatti, and entered the central committee in 1956. Perfectly in line with the party, he supported the Soviet intervention in Hungary which, according to him, did not “only save the land of chaos but contributed to world peace.” “My story,” he explained in 2009, “has gone through decisive developments due to international and national reality and through personal, profound and assumed revisions. »
This metamorphosis led him to seek points of convergence with the Socialist Party. The death of Palmiro Togliatti in 1964, while he was vacationing in Crimea, allowed Giorgio Napolitano to free himself from his tutelage and fully display his membership in the moderate wing of the PCI. Luigi Longo, who became secretary general, made him his number two. But it was his role as head of cultural policy for the PCI, between 1969 and 1975, which gradually gave him the visibility he needed to assert himself.
Reform communist
Between 1976 and 1979, he was also responsible, as spokesperson, for relations with the Andreotti government. A reformist communist, capable of dialogue with the leaders of the Christian Democracy as well as with the unions, a convinced European, he participated in numerous international congresses in Europe, establishing links with left-wing leaders, such as Willy Brandt in Germany. In 1978, he became the first PCI member to receive a visa to travel to the United States.
Now an avowed social democrat, he sides with the “migliorists”, these communists who want to improve the lot of the working class without overthrowing capitalism. He bluntly condemns the intervention of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Faced with Enrico Berlinguer, then general secretary of the PCI, who was wary of an opening towards the Socialist Party, Giorgio Napolitano maintained his reformist line and warned him against the risk of “isolation” and “sectarianism”.
Head of the foreign policy committee, he led the party to declare itself in favor of “total loyalty” to the United States and NATO. It also leads him to qualify his almost automatic support for the Palestinian cause. It was at this time that Henry Kissinger said of him: “He’s my favorite communist! » Its transformation ended in 1984 with the death of Enrico Berlinguer. Unable to succeed him, he gradually left his responsibilities within the PCI which ended up being scuttled in 1991. “The PCI took too long to transform itself into a social-democratic party with a European vocation,” he said. From now on, Giorgio Napolitano’s career will evolve within the institutions of the Italian Republic.
Becoming President of the Chamber of Deputies in 1992 in the midst of the Tangentopoli investigation (a vast network of financing and corruption), he marked his mandate with two feats of arms which earned him the support of his peers and public opinion. He opposes the inviolability of Parliament to judges who investigate corruption networks between elected officials and entrepreneurs; but it obliges elected officials to now vote openly when it comes to having one of their own resign so that he can be prosecuted by the courts.
He also severed his ties with Bettino Craxi, the secretary of the Socialist Party convicted of corruption and died in exile in Hammamet (Tunisia), in 2000. Having become a simple deputy again when Silvio Berlusconi came to power in 1994, Giorgio Napolitano was appointed minister from the inside in 1996 in the first government of Romano Prodi. It is to him that we owe the law, still in force, establishing temporary detention centers for illegal immigrants.
Third way
When the executive fell, he found refuge in the European Parliament from 1999 to 2006, taking over as chairman of the influential Constitutional Affairs Committee. In 2005, the President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi appointed him senator for life. The Quirinal road is open. On May 10, 2006, in the fourth round of voting, Giorgio Napolitano was elected President of the Republic. He is the first – and to date the only – politician from the communist ranks to access this position.
If the role may seem symbolic, although the president is head of the armies, guarantor of the institutions and the unity of the nation, its importance and its influence depend largely on the circumstances in which it is exercised, and the personalities to whom the leader of the State must confront itself. He could have been a good-natured president in the manner of Sandro Pertini (1978-1985), or combative in the manner of Oscar Luigi Scalfaro (1992-1999), who opened hostilities with Silvio Berlusconi barely appointed President of the Council in 1994.
Giorgio Napolitano chooses a third way. His apparent simplicity, his uneventful life with his wife Clio – with whom he had two sons –, his presence in the stand of the Berlin stadium in 2006 for the fourth world champion title of the national football team bring him closer of the Italian people. However, no one imagines tapping him on the shoulder. The third election of Silvio Berlusconi as President of the Council in 2008 will offer him the opportunity to deploy his maneuvering skills and his sense of dodge.
Everything opposes the two men: style, origins, sense of state. Two Italys face each other. While Silvio Berlusconi is sinking into scandals, worrying his European partners and the markets who deem him unfit to lead the country in times of crisis, Giorgio Napolitano reassures, receives heads of state and ambassadors at the Quirinal Palace, multiplies travel in Europe. He does not confront his whimsical President of the Council, except on rare occasions when the latter questions his impartiality, he bypasses him and prepares for what comes next.
He was criticized for having spoken with Mario Monti, future President of the Council from 2011, well before his predecessor was forced to resign. It was him again, in 2013, after parliamentarians looking for an unobtainable majority following the February general elections begged him to run for a second term, who managed to impose Enrico Letta on the Chigi Palace. An expert in the balance of power, taught by decades of political activities, he knows that this solution can only be temporary. Taking note of Matteo Renzi’s domination of the Democratic Party (center left), he lets him maneuver as he pleases – and perhaps encourages him to win the presidency of the Council in 2014.
Believing the country was in good hands, he resigned on January 14, 2015 from his post as President of the Republic after giving a ninth speech to the Italians during the traditional end-of-year televised speech. To justify his departure, he mentions his age which no longer allows him to fully fulfill his role. He will be replaced by a historic Christian democrat, Sergio Mattarella, who will begin his mandate in a very discreet, even self-effacing manner, before being led by circumstances to play, like his predecessor, a role of guarantor of the institutions threatened by the rise of anti-system discourse and euroscepticism.
Having become a senator again, Giorgio Napolitano continued to sit at Palazzo Madama for several years, receiving from time to time, and with the greatest discretion, the Italian and foreign officials who came to consult him, before his visits became more and more spaced out. due to his great age. And it is in the shoes of an oracle that he will end a political career lasting more than half a century, which will have seen the “red prince”, the nickname of his beginnings, become, for the vast majority of Italians, “King Giorgio.”
