Fausto Bertinotti

Bertinotti ( born March 22, 1940 in Milan ) is an Italian communist politician.

Bertinotti was 1994-2006 national secretary of the Communist Party foundation ( Partito della Refoundation ), and by November 2007 Chairman of the European Left Party. He was a member of the European Parliament. Between May 2006 and April 2008, he was President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies.

After the defeat of the left electoral alliance La Sinistra - L' Arcobaleno, as its top candidate, he had set out in the Italian elections of 2008 and the 3.1 and 3.2% in the votes cast missed the catchment in both chambers of parliament, Bertinotti announced its complete withdrawal from the in politics.

Political activity

In PSIUP and PCI

The Milan grew up as the son of a locomotive driver Bertinotti devoted himself after an engineering study of trade union work (initially in the textile industry). In 1964, he joined the Socialist Party (PSI ), of its left wing in the same year the Socialist Party of the proletarian unit ( PSIUP ) seceded, who was Bertinotti in the following years. The PSIUP tied to radical traditions of the Italian Left socialist, took pulses operaist into himself and took part in the factory council movement after 1968 In the election of 1968, the party won 4.45%. ; In 1972, she fell to below 2 percent. In the wake of these election results came in 1972, the majority of members, including Bertinotti, to the great communist PCI over. In her Bertinotti was the former chief editor of the party newspaper L' Unità and temporary Parliament President Pietro Ingrao close, which in turn was heavily influenced by the undogmatic new left and a counterweight both made ​​it to the reformism -leaning party majority as well as the " pro-Moscow " traditionalists to Armando Cossutta. Bertinotti made ​​no party career, but continued to work in the communist trade union confederation CGIL, he ascended to the leadership in the 80s.

When in February 1991 with a two-thirds majority decided the last Congress of the PCI conversion to the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS ), Bertinotti was among the opponents of farewell from communism. However, he initially remained as his mentor Ingrao member of the successor party PDS, as it better starting conditions of political work looked into their broader mass base than in the PRC was founded by Armando Cossutta Comunista (PRC). In the CGIL Bertinotti stood at the top of the left opposition flow Essere sindacato.

Side entrance in the PRC Comunista

In 1993, Bertinotti the PDS and joined the PRC. In early 1994 he was appointed as "late " whose national secretary and as such was at the side of the party chairman Cossutta. In the following years Bertinotti took on more and more leadership of the party.

Cooperation and break with the government of the center-left

In 1996, when the non-party Romano Prodi with the new party Alliance Ulivo (Olive) from PDS, former left Christian Democrats and left-wing liberals formed a left-wing government, which, however, in Parliament missed the absolute majority, decided by a large majority of the PRC to Bertinotti and Cossutta, the Ulivo by toleration without direct accession to permit the formation of a government. However, from 1997, there was growing tension over working time reduction and deregulation and flexibilising measures. In November 1998 Bertinotti sat in the National Political Committee of the PRC his request by the Government to refuse to consent to its draft budget, while Cossutta by referring to the threat of a new right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi pleading for despite all the concerns the Ulivo further to support. Cossutta left after his electoral defeat with his followers, the PRC and founded the Party of Italian Communists ( PdCl ). The tuning behavior of the PRC led to a rupture of the Prodi government, new elections and a new edition of the Berlusconi government.

The " movement of movements"

As a result of a break with the Ulivo government was the PRC under Bertinotti long time isolated and attacked from all sides alone. Bertinotti tried the PRC realign content. The party should seek solidarity with the emergent movement against neoliberal globalization. In the mass protests against the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001, the PRC participated and supported the subsequent radicalization of the trade union movement.

At the Fifth Congress of the PRC in April 2002 Bertinotti was confirmed with 88 percent of the delegates' votes in the office of the national secretary. The PRC reiterated the commitment to equal cooperation with all the forces of the " movement of movements" against neoliberalism and war. At the same time showed that significant parts of the population, especially in the trade unions, the PRC participation in a left-wing government expected that can replace Berlusconi would.

New co-operation with the reform left

From the end of 2002 led Bertinotti a rapprochement with the Democrats of the Left ( PDS has now renamed in DS ). , Where he was based on the loud becoming within the DS demands for a sharper left profile Had Bertinotti 1997, in his book Le due sinister that was preparing to break with the government, nor the opposition between a "liberal " capitalism as inescapable basis of accepting the Left and the " antagonistic ," says aspiring overcome it, he argued now that the growing pressure of social movements and the increasingly militant attitude of the trade unions within the moderate left a tendency impression conveyed to the left, going through the back joint action possible and necessary.

During the year 2004, when the performance of the PRC in the European elections ( 6.3 percent ) Bertinotti confirmed course, he signaled several times the willingness of the PRC, to participate in a future center-left government. He demanded that the substantive issues in a spirit of participatory democracy should be clarified with the participation of social movements. This earned him growing intra-party criticism of parts of the PRC, which is either a government participation declined generally or called to make by raising the programmatic personal profile clear conditions for a government co-operation with the moderate left, instead of her, as they accused Bertinotti to issue a blank check. Finally Bertinotti was blamed on an autocratic style of leadership; it became more frequent complaints that Bertinotti give the political line of the PRC known as disregard of party committees and based on interviews in bourgeois newspapers.

European settlement of the Left

For a long time Bertinotti points to the need for a European agreement on the left, in order to oppose the " neo-liberal Europe of the EU Commission and the Maastricht Treaty" "another Europe " may. He therefore advocated for the establishment of the Party of the European Left, which in May 2004 unanimously elected him to its founding congress in Rome as chairman. This step also was controversial within the PRC; Resistance comes mainly from the more traditional, " orthodox" wing of the party.

Publications

Bertinotti is the author of several published books (many of them in the form of conversations with his long -time colleague Alfonso Gianni ).

  • La Camera dei lavori. Ediesse, Roma, 1987
  • La democrazia autoritaria. Data News, Roma, 1991
  • Tutti i colori del rosso ( a cura di Lorenzo Scheggi Merlini ). Sperling & Kupfer, Milano, 1995
  • Le due sinister (con Alfonso Gianni ). Sperling & Kupfer, Milano, 1997
  • Pensare il '68 (con Alfonso Gianni ). Ponte alle Grazie, Milan, 1998
  • Le idee che non muoiono (con Alfonso Gianni ). Ponte alle Grazie, Milan, 2000
  • Per una pace infinita (con Alfonso Gianni ). Ponte alle Grazie, Milan, 2002

Honors

In January 2005, the left-liberal daily newspaper Il nuovo Riformista Bertinotti awarded the "Oscar of politics" for 2004, citing the fact that he had broken through his rejection of any terrorism and its commitment to nonviolence as a guideline of social movements with the basics of communism - praise that parts of the PRC and the orthodox left auffassten as proof that Bertinotti successfully anbiedere the opponent and put it on applause from the wrong side.

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