Former Italian president Giorgio Napolitano died in a hospital in Rome on Friday evening at the age of 98. Napolitano was the first president in the history of the Republic to hold this position twice: he was re-elected at the Quirinal Palace in 2013, after being elected head of state for the first time in 2006.
Napolitano was the first and so far only communist in the history of Italy to be elected to the highest state office. The former US Secretary of State called him – probably not entirely unironically – his ‘favorite communist’. Before his time in the presidential palace, the born Neapolitan was already president of parliament and minister of the interior.
However, his second term in the Roman Quirinal Palace was shorter than planned due to health problems. He resigned in 2015 at the age of 89.
Complex clinical picture
The medical condition of the senator-for-life has been complex for some time. In May 2022, the former president underwent abdominal surgery at the Spallanzani Clinic in Rome. In 2018, he had to undergo surgery on his aorta after a sudden illness.
Born in 1925, Napolitano studied law at the University of Naples in the 1940s, which he successfully completed in 1947. At the same time, he was active in the fascist student organization GUF from 1942. In 1945 he became a member of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), the largest communist party in the West. He took his first political steps under the wing of the charismatic communist leader Palmiro Togliatti. In 1953, Napolitano became a member of parliament at the age of 28. He actively collaborated with Togliatti’s successor Enrico Berlinguer for the “historic compromise” with the Christian Democrats, which, however, did not materialize.
From communist to democrat
The communist, who was originally loyal to Moscow, joined the social democratic wing of his party during the 1980s. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he actively campaigned for the transformation of the Communist Party into a social democratic force, which was baptized the Party of Democratic Left (PDS). In 1992, the father of two sons took over the position of president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, which had been vacated by Christian Democrat Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who was elected head of state. After center-left leader Romano Prodi’s victory in the 1996 general election, he took over the delicate post of interior minister.
The new turning point in his life came in 2005, when then-President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi appointed him senator for life for his services to Italian democracy. In 2006, Napolitano was elected president in the fourth round of voting. Seven years later he was re-elected for a second mandate after former European Commission head Prodi failed in the elections.
The record president
Napolitano holds the longest term of office of any Italian president at 3,166 days. On December 31, 2014, in his New Year’s speech to the Italian people, he announced that he was requesting early resignation due to his old age (89 years old at the time). He finally signed his resignation and left office on January 14, 2015. On January 31, 2015, Napolitano’s successor, Sergio Mattarella, was elected and remains in office.
Source: Krone
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