Francesco Rutelli
Francesco Rutelli ( born June 14, 1954 in Rome ) is an Italian politician. From May 2006 to May 2008, he was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture of Italy in the cabinet of Romano Prodi.
Political career
At first he was a member of the Radical Party of Marco Pannella, for which he was in 1983 elected to the Chamber of Deputies. At the beginning of the 90s he turned to the newly created movement of the Federazione dei Verdi ( Greens) to, for which he was national coordinator in 1992. The following year, he was named Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Minister of the Environment: Rutelli took office, gave it but just one day later on, to protest against the fact that Parliament had rejected a prosecution of former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi.
In December 1993 Rutelli was elected mayor candidate of the center- left alliance in Rome. In the elections, he managed to beat Gianfranco Fini of the National Alliance. Rutelli was the first " green" mayor of the Eternal City. In 1997 he was elected for a second term in which he gained a reputation as a manager of the "Holy Year 2000".
In 1999 he was elected for the party I Democratici to the European parliament, he became a candidate for the office of the Prime Minister of the center-left coalition The Olive in 2001. The coalition led by Rutelli, not supported by the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista dei Valori and Italia, lost the election against the center-right coalition Casa delle Libertà of Silvio Berlusconi.
In 2002, he was instrumental in that the parties I Democratici, Italian People's Party and Renewal Italiano merged to form a new party, whose leader he was: La Margherita - Democrazia è Libertà. In 2004 he took up a proposal of Romano Prodi and presented for the European elections, the Unity List Uniti nell'Ulivo.
Following the success of Margherita regional elections in 2005 and the equally successful primaries Unione alliance for parliamentary elections in 2006, he launched the idea of a unit list of the Democrats of the Sinistra, which was a first step in that direction, which denotes Rutelli political dream: the establishment a large social Democratic Party. This was formed in October 2007 as a " Democratic Party " from the merger of the Democrats of the Sinistra and Margherita.
On 17 May 2006 was appointed Francesco Rutelli as Vice President of the Council of Ministers as well as culture minister in the Prime Minister Romano Prodi -led Italian government.
On February 17, 2008, Francesco Rutelli by Walter Veltroni, the outgoing mayor of Rome, proposed as a candidate for the mayoral election in Rome on 13 / April 14. He received the first ballot with 45.8 % of the votes cast, the relative majority, but lost in the second ballot on 27 / April 28 his rival candidate Gianni Alemanno the Popolo della Libertà, the 53.7 % against 46.3 % was the choice to decide for themselves.
Within the Partito Democratico Rutelli led to the centrist wing. After the election, Pier Luigi Bersani as the new leader of the Democrats 25 October 2009 Rutelli feared a shift to the left of the party and resigned from the PD. Then he announced the formation of a new center party under the name "Alliance for Italy" ( National Alliance per l' Italia ), which will work with the Center Union UDC Pier Ferdinando Casini and a bourgeois alternative to the populist policies of Silvio Berlusconi and allied with him Northern League should represent.