Giorgio Napolitano

Giorgio Napolitano (Italian: [ˈdʒordʒo napoliˈtaːno]; 29 June 1925 – 22 September 2023) was an Italian politician who served as President of Italy from 2006 to 2015. At the time the longest-serving president in Italian history and the first to achieve re-election,^[1][2] he played a dominant role in Italian politics, leading some critics to derisively refer to him as Re Giorgio ("King Giorgio").^[3]

Napolitano was a longtime member of the Italian Communist Party, which he joined in 1945 after taking part in the Italian resistance movement, and of its post-Communist democratic socialist and social democratic successors, from the Democratic Party of the Left to the Democrats of the Left. He was a leading member of migliorismo, a reformist, moderate, and modernizing faction on the right-wing of the PCI,^[4][5][6] which was inspired by the values of democratic socialism,^[7] looked favourably to social democracy, and was interested in revisionist Marxism.^[8] First elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1953, he took an assiduous interest in parliamentary life and was president of the Chamber of Deputies from 1992 to 1994. He was Minister of the Interior from 1996 to 1998 during the first Prodi government.^[9] A close friend of Henry Kissinger,^[10] he was also the first high-ranking leader of a communist party to visit the United States, which he did in 1978.^[9]

In 2005, Napolitano was appointed a senator for life in Italy by then president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.^[11] In the May 2006 Italian presidential election, he was elected by the Italian Parliament as president of Italy. A pro-Europeanist,^[12] Napolitano was the first former Communist to hold said office.^[11] During his first term in office, he oversaw governments both of the centre-left coalition, such as the second Prodi government, and the centre-right coalition, such as the fourth Berlusconi government.^[13] In November 2011, Silvio Berlusconi resigned as prime minister of Italy amid financial and economic problems. In keeping with his constitutional role, Napolitano then asked former European commissioner Mario Monti to form a cabinet,^[14] which critics referred to as a "government of the president".^[15]

Napolitano intended to retire from politics after his seven-year presidential term expired, but reluctantly agreed to run again in the 2013 presidential election to safeguard the continuity of the country's institutions during the parliamentary deadlock that followed the February 2013 Italian general election. He was the first sitting president to run for a second term.^[16] On being re-elected as president with broad cross-party support in Parliament, he overcame the impasse by inviting Enrico Letta to propose a grand coalition government.^[17] When Letta handed in his resignation in February 2014, Napolitano mandated Matteo Renzi (Letta's factional challenger) to form a new government.^[18] After a record eight and a half years as president, citing age factors, the 89-year-old Napolitano resigned in January 2015. He had already stated that he did not intend to serve out a full second term.^[19] He then resumed his Italian Senate seat,^[20][21] which he held until his death in 2023.^[22]

Napolitano was often accused by his critics of having transformed a largely ceremonial role into a political and executive one, acting as kingmaker during his political tenure.^[23][24] Supporters instead credited him with saving Italy from the brink of default during the European debt crisis and subsequent political stalemates,^[25] which helped to stabilize the country.^[26] At the time of his death in 2023, he was the longest-serving Italian President as well as the longest-lived Italian President on record.^[27] He was also the oldest head of state in Europe and the third oldest in the world, behind the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.^[28] A state funeral in secular form was held for Napolitano on 22 September 2023. In office for 8 years and 244 days, he was the longest-serving president, until the record was surpassed by Sergio Mattarella in 2023. He also was the longest-lived president in the history of the Italian Republic,^[27] which has been in existence since 1946. Although he was a prominent figure of the First Italian Republic, he did not take part in the Constituent Assembly of Italy that drafted the Italian constitution;^[27] he is considered one of the symbols of the Second Italian Republic, which came about after the Tangentopoli scandal of the 1990s.^[27]