Secretary Nicola Fratoianni Newspaper Left | President Laura Lauri | |
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Founded 19 February 2017; 23 days ago (2017-02-19) Merger of Left Ecology Freedom
Future to the Left
minor groups Headquarters Via Arenula, 29
00186 Rome | ||
Italian Left (Italian: Sinistra Italiana, SI) is a left-wing political party in Italy.
Contents
SI was launched in November 2015 as a parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies (full name: Italian Left – Left Ecology Freedom), mainly including Left Ecology Freedom (SEL), dissidents from the Democratic Party (see Future to the Left) and splinters from the Five Star Movement. At its launch, SI included 32 deputies, soon followed by 8 senators (sub-group in the Mixed Group of the Senate formed in February 2016) and 2 MEPs. SI was officially founded as a full-fledged party in February 2017, after that SEL chose to dissolve into it in December 2016.
The party is led by Nicola Fratoianni. Notable members include Nichi Vendola (former leader of SEL), Loredana De Petris, Stefano Fassina, and Sergio Cofferati. In the aftermath of its founding congress, 18 deputies left the party, leaving it with 13 deputies, 8 senators and 2 MEPs: 17 deputies, led by former group leader Arturo Scotto, joined the brand-new Democrats and Progressives party, while Laura Boldrini (President of the Chamber of Deputies) defected to the Mixed Group.
Background
In June 2015 Stefano Fassina, a former deputy minister, left the Democratic Party (PD) over disagreements with Matteo Renzi, PD leader and Prime Minister. In doing this, he was followed by his long-time ally Monica Gregori.
In July, during a convention, Fassina launched Future to the Left, an incubator of a new left-leaning party, with other movements and breakaway groups, such as Possible, and Left Ecology Freedom (SEL).
In November one senator (Corradino Mineo) and three more deputies (Alfredo D'Attorre, Carlo Galli and Vincenzo Folino) left the party in protest at Renzi. D'Attorre, who holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, wrote a manifesto for a new "labour" party, which was signed also by the other five MPs and, among other things, read: "The genetic mutation of the PD, born as central force of the Italian centre-left, is unfortunately already completed. The Renzi experience and the introduced mutations won't be a parenthesis. They have already altered in a irreversible way the perception of the PD and its function in the collective imagination". Subsequently, a parliamentary group under the banner of Italian Left was formed in the Chamber of Deputies, whose core was formed by SEL.
Road to the new party
In February 2016 SI held its constituent assembly in Rome. Consequently, SI was established as a sub-group within the Mixed Group in the Senate: five senators of SEL, two dissidents from the Five Star Movement (Fabrizio Bocchino and Francesco Campanella) and one former Democrat (Mineo) joined, while two SEL senators (including Sardinian nationalist Luciano Uras) refused to join and left their party altogether.
Several lists named after SI participated in the 2016 local elections. The party did particularly well in Sesto Fiorentino, a medium-sized city in the metropolitan area of Florence, where it won 17.5% of the vote and its candidate for mayor was elected in the run-off with 65.5%, by beating his Democratic opponent.
In December 2016 SEL was dissolved, in order to merge it into SI in early 2017.
Founding congress
In February 2017 SI was officially founded and Nicola Fratoianni was elected as its first secretary.
Contextually, SI leader in the Chamber of Deputies Arturo Scotto, who was originally a candidate for the leadership, Massimiliano Smeriglio, D'Attorre, Galli and Folino led a splinter group into the Democrats and Progressives, a party founded by left-wing splinters of the PD.
Composition
The party's founding members were:
Along these, some youth organisations (including ACT! Agire Costruire Trasformare and TILT), local groups and individuals have joined SI.
The latter include Sergio Cofferati MEP, Alfredo D'Attorre, Corradino Mineo, Andrea Ranieri and others from the Democratic Party; Fabrizio Bocchino and Francesco Campanella from the Five Star Movement; Luca Casarini, Luciana Castellina, Maurizio Landini and Curzio Maltese MEP.
Ideology
SI's ideology is a mix of democratic socialism, social democracy and anti-austerity issues.
In his manifesto, D'Attorre wrote that the new party will need to "go beyond the separation between reformists and radicals" and later explained that SI will be Keynesian and opposed to neoliberalism. The coalition's economics adviser is Joseph Stiglitz, a well-known American economist and winner of the Nobel prize in economics, who had already been involved with the Greek Syriza, the Spanish Podemos and the British Labour Party.
Fassina has also proposed a "controlled disintegration of the Eurozone".