Fausto Bertinotti
| Fausto Bertinotti | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| President of the Chamber of Deputies | |
|
In office April 29, 2006 – April 28, 2008 |
|
| President |
Carlo Azeglio Ciampi Giorgio Napolitano |
| Preceded by | Pier Ferdinando Casini |
| Succeeded by | Gianfranco Fini |
| National Secretary of the Communist Refoundation Party | |
|
In office June 28, 1993 – May 6, 2006 |
|
| Preceded by | Sergio Garavini |
| Succeeded by | Franco Giordano |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
March 22, 1940 Milan, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Political party |
PSI (1960–1964) PSIUP (1964–1972) PCI (1972–1991) PDS (1991–1993) PRC (1993–2008) Independent (2008–present) |
| Profession |
Syndicalist Politician |
Fausto Bertinotti (born on 22 March 1940) is an Italian politician who led the Communist Refoundation Party (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista) from 1994 to 2006 and served as President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 2006 to 2008. On April 29, 2006, after the center-left coalition's victory in the Italian general election, he was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower House of Parliament.
Bertinotti was born to Enrico Bertinotti, a railroad engineer, and Rosa Bertinotti.
After completing his education in Milan, he joined the CGIL (General Confederation of Italian Labour) in 1964, becoming secretary of the local organisation of the Federazione Italiana degli Operai Tessili (Italian Textile Workers Federation). Three years later, he became president of the labour chamber of Novara. From 1975 to 1985 he was regional secretary of the CGIL in Piedmont. In 1972 he joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI), and soon afterwards became the leader of the most left-wing tendency in the CGIL, called "Essere Sindacato" (to be a union), which harshly criticised the consensus politics of the majority.
In this role he took part in the great workers' struggles of the time, including that of the Fiat workers which ended with a 35-day occupation of the car manufacturer's factory. A committed and hardline trade unionist, Bertinotti affirmed the need for the working class to strike against the "injustices of the boss class", thereby attracting the anger of more moderate trade unionists. At that time he first disagreed with Sergio Cofferati, beginning a polemic which has continued, albeit in different forms, until the present.
In 1994, the year in which he was elected to the secretariat of the Rifondazione Comunista and to the Italian and European parliaments, Bertinotti resigned all his trade union positions. He remains interested in economics and workers' rights, and has been offered the position of Minister for Labour on several occasions by leaders of the Italian centre-left, but he has always declined it.
Bertinotti did not readily find a political party during the First Italian Republic which conformed to his principles. He was a member of the Italian Socialist Party and then the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity before joining the Italian Communist Party, in which he was a member of Pietro Ingrao's tendency.
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Wikipedia