REST IN POWER

Giorgio Napolitano, former Italian president and first ex-Communist in that post, has died at 98

FRANCES D'EMILIO
Fri, September 22, 2023

ROME (AP) — Giorgio Napolitano, the first former Communist to rise to Italy’s presidency and the first person to be elected twice to the mostly ceremonial post, died on Friday, the presidential palace said. He was 98.

A statement issued Friday night by the presidential palace confirmed Italian news reports of the death of Napolitano, who had been ailing in a Rome hospital for weeks.

The current president, Sergio Mattarella, in a message hailed his predecessor as head of state, saying that Napolitano’s life “mirrored a large part of (Italy's) history in the second half of the 20th century, with its dramas, its complexity, its goals, its hopes."

As a prominent member of what had long been the largest Communist party in the West, Napolitano had advocated positions that often veered from party orthodoxy. He sought dialogue with Italian and European socialists to end his party’s isolation, and he was an early backer of European integration.

Turin daily La Stampa once wrote of Napolitano: “He was the least communist Communist that the party ever enlisted.”

In a condolence telegram to Napolitano's widow, Clio, Pope Francis said the late president “showed great gifts of intellect and sincere passion for Italian political life as well as strong interest for the fates of nations.”

The pontiff, who is on a pilgrimage to France, noted he had had personal meetings with Napolitano, “during which I appreciated his humanity and long-range vision in assuming with rectitude important choices, especially in delicate moments for the life of the country.”

During the first Gulf War, Napolitano broke with the position of the leader of the Italian Communist Party to oppose the withdrawal of Italy’s tiny contingent.

That amounted to a radical evolution for a Communist politician, who at the time of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary had hailed the suppression as necessary. Ultimately, his political reputation was shaped by his reformist views.

A former U.S. ambassador to Italy, Richard Gardner, in comments to The Associated Press in 2006, when Napolitano was first elected to be head of state, called him “a true believer in democracy, a friend to the United States.” As ambassador, Gardner had helped arrange secret meetings with Napolitano at a time when any public meeting would have been seen as embarrassing for Italian Communists as well as U.S. politicians.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Napolitano was among the staunchest supporters of his party’s reform path, which would eventually lead to changing its name and dropping the hammer-and-sickle symbol.

Premier Giorgia Meloni, whose far-right party is at the opposite end of the political spectrum of the late president, expressed condolences in the name of her government.

Like many other future politicians of his generation, Napolitano fought against the Italian Fascists and Nazi occupiers during World War II. When the war ended, he joined the Communist Party, and in 1953, he was elected to Parliament, an office he would hold for 10 straight legislatures.

In 1989, he went to the United States with the party secretary for the first-ever visit by a Italian Communist leader.

While the presidential role is mostly ceremonial, the head of state can send Parliament packing sooner than its normal five-year term if it is hopelessly squabbling, a not-rare occurrence in Italy’s long history of short-lived governments.

The president also taps someone to attempt to form a new government and can reject some of the premier’s Cabinet choices or refuse to sign legislation as a way to encourage Parliament to improve a law.

Supposed to be above the political fray, Italy's president also can serve as a sort of moral compass for the country and a guardian of the values laid out in Italy's post-war Constitution.

During his long career, Napolitano also served as speaker of Parliament’s lower Chamber of Deputies and for five years as a lawmaker in the European Parliament.

In 2005, his predecessor in the Quirinal palace, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, conferred on him one of Italy’s greatest honors, making him a senator-for-life.

A year later, Parliament would make him president of Italy, the first former Communist — and so far the only one — to serve as head of state.

Admirers praised Napolitano’s balanced attitude and gentlemanly ways. He was sometimes dubbed “King Giorgio.” But critics pointed to what they saw as excessive caution.

Still, when at the end of his first, seven-year term as head of state, bickering lawmakers couldn’t reach consensus on his successor, he broke with tradition and agreed to be elected to a second term — with the proviso that he wouldn’t serve a full term due to advancing age. He was then 80.

In April 2013, Napolitano pardoned a U.S. Air Force colonel convicted in an Italian trial based on the U.S. extraordinary rendition practice that had resulted in a Muslim cleric being abducted from a street in Milan in 2003 and hustled off to Egypt where he was tortured, before eventually being released.

Napolitano said he granted the pardon in hopes of keeping U.S.-Italian relations strong, especially on security matters. The United States had considered the trial and convictions unprecedented because a U.S. military officer had been convicted for deeds committed on Italian territory.

Napolitano resigned in January 2015, paving the way for Mattarella, a former Christian Democrat, to be elected. Mattarella would go on to be himself twice elected to the presidency, again after renewed political gridlock in Parliament thwarted the election of a fresh candidate in 2022.

Beside his wife, whom he married in 1959, Napolitano is survived by two sons, Giovanni and Giulio.

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Former AP writer Alessandra Rizzo contributed to this report.

A  COMMUNIST SAVES CAPITALISM
Napolitano, president who helped save Italy from possible default, dies at 98

Fri, September 22, 2023 

Italian former President and senator Giorgio Napolitano speaks following a talk with Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinal Palace in Rome


By Steve Scherer

ROME (Reuters) - Giorgio Napolitano, who died on Friday aged 98, was one of modern Italy's most important presidents as he steered the country away from the brink of default during Europe's debt crisis and later out of political paralysis.

A career politician who joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1945, the mild-mannered, bespectacled Napolitano was picked by parliament to become Italy's 11th president in 2006 and re-elected for a then-unprecedented second term seven years later.

He stepped down in 2015, midway through his mandate, saying that, at 89, he was too old to carry on.

Napolitano forged a close relationship with the late Pope Benedict XVI and was one of the few people to have been warned in advance of Benedict's shock resignation in February 2013.

Italian presidents had mostly been little more than ceremonial figures, ribbon-cutters and authors of patriotic speeches, but some credit Napolitano, affectionately known as "King George", with saving the country from financial ruin, while critics said he overstepped his bounds.

In November 2011, at the height of the euro zone debt crisis, then-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi resigned after losing parliamentary support, leaving Italy teetering on the verge of defaulting on its debts.

Napolitano quickly named Mario Monti, a former European Commission technocrat, to impose deep spending cuts and lead the country through the turmoil.

Three years later, after former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a book there had been a "scheme" to replace Berlusconi, Napolitano was accused of conniving with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to depose the billionaire media mogul, an accusation the president denied.

The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, casting itself as the defender of political orthodoxy, accused Napolitano of exceeding his constitutional powers, calling an impeachment vote that parliament rejected.

In 2013, with his mandate expired, Napolitano had cleaned out his office and was looking forward to retirement when party leaders - including Berlusconi - pleaded with him to accept a second term to help overcome parliamentary divisions.

He acquiesced and days later, because no clear winner had emerged from a parliamentary election held a month before, Napolitano installed a right-left grand coalition under centre-left politician Enrico Letta, bringing the tumult to an end.

COMMUNIST

Napolitano, born and raised in the southern city of Naples, was an active anti-fascist as a student, according to his official profile, before joining the PCI.

He spent more than four decades in parliament after first being elected in 1953, initially sticking close to the official Communist Party line, praising the Soviet Union's 1956 invasion of Hungary.

But he was always seen to be on the reformist wing of the movement and in 1978 became the first high-ranking leader of a communist party to visit the United States.

The PCI, once the most influential leftist force in western Europe, was dissolved in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moderate elements formed the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), with Napolitano striving to position it as a mainstream, pro-Western group.

"We must resist the temptation of once again turning America into the traditional bogeyman of the left," he said in 1991, defending U.S. actions in the first Gulf War and earning a chorus of jeers and hisses from PDS members.

He served as president of the lower house of parliament from 1992 to 1994, and was interior minister under prime minister Romano Prodi from 1996-98.

A tall man with a courteous demeanour, Napolitano frequently showed his physical fragility and emotions in the latter years of his presidency, tearing up nostalgically during speeches.

After his retirement Napolitano continued attending Senate sittings when his health permitted. Last year he skipped the inaugural session of the upper house, which he had the right to chair as the most senior member, due to his frail condition.

He is survived by his wife, Clio, who was often seen by his side during official state visits and events, two sons, Giovanni and Giulio, and grandchildren.

(Editing by Crispian Balmer, Robin Pomeroy and Mark Heinrich)