Roma, goodbye to Giovanni Berlinguer, dies at age 90 the brother of … – L’Unione Sarda

E ‘dead in the night in Rome Giovanni Berlinguer. He was 90 years old.

Born in Sassari in 1924, brother of the secretary of the Communist Party Enrico Berlinguer, doctor and university professor, Giovanni Berlinguer was Parliamentary Party since 1972 but a leading role on the political scene had him in his old age.
 

 

It was in 2001 when, at 77 years old, he ran to the secretary of the DS as a leader of the left wing. Had 34.1 percent of the vote, a remarkable result that went beyond the forecasts.

He won then Piero Fassino (who now remembers him as “intellectual refined always ready for dialogue”), but at the Congress of Pesaro Berlinguer made a speech that after almost 15 years sounds incredibly prescient: “In the party – said from the stage – there are incidents and situations of abnormalities of the dialectic congress that should be corrected immediately. From here to have forms of corruption is a short step.”

Since then and until 2007, the year of birth of the Democratic Party, he was the leader of the “mainstream”, which collected all the left inside. As long as the DS existed, Berlinguer did everything to avoid the splitting of the left wing. But after the birth of the Democratic Party left the party and joined the Left Democratic Fabio Mussi. Until May 2009 Giovanni Berlinguer was Member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

The disappearance dI Berlinguer has hit the world of the left who saw in him a point of reference, but the grief transcends political affiliations. Among the first to express sorrow for the death, the president Sergio Mattarella who recalled the “clear picture” of Giovanni Berlinguer, “bright personality and with high moral sense”. and “deep humanity”. Matteo Renzi recalled him as “the sharp critical awareness of the Italian and European left,” while Giorgio Napolitano recalled the years of the common commitment in the Communist Party and “his strong contribution to the development of the health care reform of 1978″.

To pay tribute to him in the funeral chamber set up at the Capitol, among others, the mayor of Rome and former secretary of the Democratic Party Walter Veltroni.