Giorgio Napolitano, the interventionist President, has died
The clash with Berlinguer and the friendship with Craxi ruined by Tangentopoli. The disagreements with Berlusconi and the direction of the Monti and Letta governments. History of the first Head of State re-elected for a second termAt 7.45pm, in the Salvator Mundi clinic in Rome, the President Emeritus of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano died at the age of 98.
His health conditions have progressively worsened after two delicate surgeries in recent years, one on the aorta in 2018 and one on the abdomen in 2022.
A life entirely dedicated to politics, he was, together with Francesco Cossiga, one of the most controversial and criticized presidents of the Republic (the first exponent of the PCI) in Italian history.
BIRTH, STUDIES AND FIRST STEPS IN POLITICS – Giorgio Napolitano was born in Naples in 1925, graduated from high school in Padua - where his parents had moved in the meantime - then enrolled in the faculty of law at the Federico II University of Naples. During the years of fascism he skillfully kept two feet in one shoe: he joined the Fascist University Groups (GUF), officially militated in fascism but began to look towards anti-fascism, coming into contact with a group of Neapolitan communists who were preparing their arrival in Naples by Palmiro Togliatti. In 1945 he joined the PCI, two years later he graduated and in 1953 he entered Parliament for the first time. He would not emerge again until 1996, except for a brief parenthesis, that of the fourth legislature of republican Italy.
In 1956 he took a stance that would cost him several criticisms in the future: Napolitano praised the intervention of Soviet tanks to repress the riots in Hungary, saying that in this way Moscow «contributed to preventing Hungary from falling into chaos and counter-revolution , and also to world peace." In the future he himself will criticize this opinion of his.
FROM THE CLASH WITH BERLINGUER AT THE VIMINALE - In the 1960s he continued his growth in the party: he became head of the labor section, then secretary of the Naples federation. He is one of the major exponents of the moderate current of the PCI, the one closest to the socialists: in the years of greatest internal conflict his current was defined by his opponents as "meliorist", as it tended to improve the living conditions of workers without distorting the capitalist system .
These are the years of the clash with Enrico Berlinguer, which was later held against him several times.
Napolitano deals with the PCI's foreign policy, and swears loyalty to the United States and NATO, so much so that the Republican Kissinger calls him "my favorite communist". In '92 he became president of the Chamber. It is the Tangentopoli legislature, and it is at this moment that his good relationship with Bettino Craxi breaks down. At the helm of Montecitorio, Napolitano imposed an open vote on the authorizations to proceed (until then always rejected by secret vote), earning a harsh attack from the secretary of the PSI: «How do you believe that the Honorable Giorgio Napolitano, who had relations with the entire nomenklatura of the East starting from the Soviet one, had he never noticed the great traffic that took place under him between the various representatives of the PCI and the Eastern countries? Haven't you ever noticed?".
He is never directly involved in the investigation of the Mani Pulite pool, but reference is made several times to the meliorist current when talking about bribes for the Milan metro. In '94 it was he, for the PDS, who declared his vote (moderate) against giving confidence to the Berlusconi government. Two years later he became Interior Minister of the Prodi government. He established temporary detention centers for illegal immigrants (the Turco-Napolitano law), and was criticized (and some even called for his resignation) for the lack of supervision of Licio Gelli who fled abroad in that period.
After the fall of the Prodi government he went to the European Parliament, and on 23 September 2005 Carlo Azeglio Ciampi nominated him senator for life together with Sergio Pininfarina.
IL QUIRINALE - Already the first communist at the Interior Ministry, he also became the first president of the Republic from the PCI. He was elected on 10 May 2006 on the fourth ballot, and after a couple of months he attended the world triumph of Marcello Lippi's Azzurri at the Olympiastadion in Berlin.
After two years the Prodi government falls, and Giorgio Napolitano finds himself having to deal with Silvio Berlusconi. The conflict over the Eluana Englaro case is serious: she refuses to sign the provision with which the government wants to force the woman who has been in a vegetative state for 17 years to receive artificial nutrition and hydration. Eluana will die, and Napolitano will be heavily attacked by various centre-right exponents. Even accused of having "killed" the woman.
During his mandate he had to deal with several government crises and, as often happens, when the parties are weak, the figure of the Head of State becomes increasingly important.
Together with Cossiga he is - more by necessity than by will - the most interventionist President of the Republic in history. He receives the resignation of Romano Prodi twice, and calls new elections in 2008. Berlusconi wins. But amid various scandals, the rift with Fini and the speculative attacks on Italian government bonds, Napolitano "forced" the prime minister to resign in November 2011.
He appoints Mario Monti senator for life (many have not forgiven him for this move) and then tasks him with leading a new executive with the support of the Pd and Pdl. And it is in that period, in an editorial dated 2 December 2011, that the New York Times gave him the nickname "King George", comparing him to King George VI of the United Kingdom, for his strenuous defense of the institutions, also done by overriding those which are the prerogatives of the President of the Republic.
In 2013 new elections, the "non-victory" of the Democratic Party and the appointment of Pier Luigi Bersani, who fails and ends up being mocked by the 5 Stars in a streaming that went down in history. According to many it is just a way to send the leader of the Democratic Party "to crash", to burn him and study a majority that includes the center-left with several exponents of the center-right. King Giorgio is the director of the Letta government, born on 28 April 2013.
THE RE-ELECTION - A few days before the birth of the Letta government, on 20 April, Napolitano becomes the first president of republican Italy to be elected for a second term. The parties are unable to reach an agreement on a new figure, the national and international political situation is increasingly complicated, and a large parliamentary group asks him to sacrifice himself for Italy. King George accepts, in his inauguration speech he lashes out at the parties and Parliament which, as if nothing had happened, responds to the attacks with thunderous applause and real standing ovations. A scene bordering on the "fantozzian". «I was almost forced and I said yes out of sense of the institutions», he later said in an interview.
In February 2014 Matteo Renzi eliminates the Letta government. Giorgio Napolitano doesn't like the move, who is forced to give the job to the young Florentine dem on the rise. A government, the first since 2011, that was not born under his direction. And Napolitano resigned after less than a year, on January 14, 2015, officially for reasons related to age. He leaves as the oldest Head of State in Europe, third in the world preceded by Mugabe (Zimbabwe) and King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia), after having appointed five prime ministers (Prodi, Berlusconi, Monti, Enrico Letta and Renzi).
BERLUSCONI'S AD PERSONAM LAWS AND THE CLASH WITH THE PALERMO PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE - Three laws promulgated that attract the most ferocious criticism, all from the Berlusconi government. They are the Lodo Alfano, the law on legitimate impediment and the tax shield. The 5 Star Movement even files an indictment against him for an attack on the Constitution.
Between 2012 and 2013 the clash with the Palermo Prosecutor's Office. The investigators, intercepting Nicola Mancino (investigated for perjury, and acquitted in the first instance, as part of the trial on the State-mafia negotiation) recorded the latter's conversations with the Head of State.
Napolitano raises a conflict of attribution before the Prosecutor's Office to ensure that the wiretaps - already judged irrelevant - are destroyed without an excerpt hearing which allows the lawyers to listen to them (who could report their contents to the press), and the Constitutional Court proves him right. A behavior that costs him countless criticisms, from the press and from various jurists, starting from the former president of the Constitutional Court Gustavo Zagrebelsky. But also the support of as many constitutionalists, convinced that the Head of State cannot be intercepted. Not even by mistake.
In short, a controversial figure, whose actions - especially in the period spent at the Quirinale - have given rise to the most disparate criticisms. The director of Italian political and institutional life during one of the deepest post-war crises. Whatever you think, a character who wrote the history of republican Italy.
