Former Italian President Giorgio Napolitano is dead. The politician died on Friday evening at the age of 98 in a hospital in Rome, as several Italian media outlets unanimously reported. The former communist was in office from 2006 to 2015 – longer than any other Italian head of state before him. He spent the last years of his life in seclusion.
Napolitano was the first president to be re-elected in post-war Italian history. He also enjoyed a high reputation internationally. He was considered an impartial and reliable conversation partner.
Napolitano was born in 1925 in Naples, which he represented as a member of parliament for ten terms. The lawyer became a member of the Communist Party (PCI) at a young age, where he made it to the Politburo. For many years the PCI was considered the most important communist party in Western Europe. Napolitano was considered part of the reform wing there. Even before the fall of the Wall in 1989, he spoke out in favor of renaming the party, which then became the left-wing party PDS.
Moral corrective to Berlusconi
In the 1990s, Napolitano was president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and then interior minister in a center-left government. In the meantime he also sat in the European Parliament. For his services he was awarded the title of senator for life.
In 2006, Napolitano became the first ex-communist to be elected president. Contrary to original plans, he took up a second term in office after being re-elected in 2013 after efforts to find a successor failed several times. For reasons of age, he announced his early retirement at the turn of the year 2014/15. With more than 3,000 days, he still holds the record for the longest term of office for an Italian president.
Sergio Mattarella, who remains head of state today, was elected as his successor. During his time as president, Napolitano enjoyed high authority across party lines. He was often seen as a moral corrective to the populist head of government Silvio Berlusconi, who had to resign in 2011 and has also since died.