Communist Refoundation Party

Communist Refoundation Party Partito della Rifondazione Comunista
Secretary-General	Paolo Ferrero
Founded	12 December 1991
Headquarters	via del Policlinico 131 00161 Rome
Newspaper	Liberazione
Membership  (2010)	40,763[1]
Ideology	Communism
National affiliation	Federation of the Left
International affiliation	none
European affiliation	Party of the European Left, European Anticapitalist Left (observer)
European Parliament Group	European United Left–Nordic Green Left (1995–2009)
Website
http://www.rifondazione.it
Politics of Italy Political parties Elections

The Communist Refoundation Party (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista, PRC) is a communist Italian political party. Its current secretary is Paolo Ferrero.

The party participates both in the Party of the European Left (of which Fausto Bertinotti, a senior PRC member, has been the first president) and the European Anticapitalist Left. Its members in the European Parliament sat in the European United Left–Nordic Green Left group.

History

Foundation

In 1991, when the Italian Communist Party (PCI), led by Achille Occhetto, became the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), dissidents led by Armando Cossutta launched the Communist Refoundation Party. In the same year Proletarian Democracy, a far left outfit, merged into the new party, which aimed to unite all Italian communists.

The first secretary of the PRC was Sergio Garavini, who resigned in June 1993, being by Fausto Bertinotti, a long-time CGIL trade union leader, who had left PDS only some months before. The leadership of Bertinotti was a turning point for the party, which jumped to 8.6% of vote in the 1996 general election.

The centre-left

The party supported Prodi I Cabinet until 1998, when Bertinotti's Communists turned to opposition and the government lost its majority in Parliament. However this decision was divisive also in Bertinotti's camp, where a group of dissidents, led by President of the party Armando Cossutta, split off and founded a rival communist outfit, the Party of Italian Communists (Partito dei Comunisti Italiani, PdCI), which joined Massimo D'Alema's government.

In October 2004 the PRC joined the centre-left opposition and in April 2005, Nichi Vendola, an openly gay politician and one of the emerging leaders of the party, was elected President of traditionally conservative Apulia Region, due to the support of the whole centre-left and after a primary election, which saw Vendola beat a centrist opponent. He was the only regional President ever belonging to the PRC.

After the 2006 general election in which centre-left The Union coalition won narrowly over the centre-right House of Freedoms coalition, party leader Fausto Bertinotti was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies, and was replaced by Franco Giordano as party secretary. The PRC joined the Prodi II Cabinet, which included Paolo Ferrero, a long-time member of the party, as Minister of Social Solidarity.

The decision to participate in the centre-left coalition government, and in particular the party's decision to vote to refinance the Italian military presence in Afghanistan and send troops to Lebanon attracted criticism from other sections of the European far left^[2] and provoked the splits of many groups, notably the Communist Workers' Party, the Communist Alternative Party and Critical Left.

Out of Parliament

In December 2007 the party took part in the creation of The Left – The Rainbow with the Party of Italian Communists, the Federation of the Greens and Democratic Left. This coalition was comprehensively defeated in the 2008 general election: it won only 3.1% of the vote, compared to 10.2% won by the two communist parties and the Greens two years before.

In April 2008, following the severe defeat of the party in the 2008 general election, a group of former Bertinottiani, composed basically of former members of Proletarian Democracy and led by Paolo Ferrero and Giovanni Russo Spena, allied with the other minority factions to force secretary Franco Giordano to resign. They criticized The Left – The Rainbow alliance and the political line of Fausto Bertinotti.

In the July congress the internal left-wing prevailed over Bertinottiani and Paolo Ferrero was elected new secretary. He was supported by barely 53% of the party delegates and the party was in fact very divided on factional and regional lines with Vendola, the standard-bearer of Bertinottiani, accusing Northern delegates of having absorbed leghismo and stating that "it was the end of the party I knew".^[3]

On 24 January 2009 the group around Vendola, including Giordano and with the silent support of Bertinotti, finally decided to leave the party and to transform their faction into a party under the name Movement for the Left (MpS). The goal of MpS will be that of forming a new party with other left-wing groups, including the Federation of the Greens, Democratic Left, Unite the Left (splinters from the PdCI) and United to the Left.^[4] However some members of RpS, including Giusto Catania, Milziade Caprili and Tommaso Sodano, decided not to leave the PRC^[5] and re-organized themselves into To the Left with Refoundation.^[6]

After the split of RpS/MpS, the PRC formed a joint list known as Anticapitalist List with the PdCI, Socialism 2000 and United Consumers for the 2009 European Parliament election. Originally also Critical Left was to join, but finally chose to step aside.^[7] The list received just 3.4% of the national vote and failed to return any MEPs.

In December 2009 the Anticapitalist List was trasformed into Federation of the Left (FdS).^[8][9] The FdS held its first congress on 20–21 November 2010. Oliviero Diliberto (PdCI) was elected spokerperson of the group by the national council.^[10][11]

Factions

The majority of the party following the October 2004 congress was led by Fausto Bertinotti (59.2%) and it views itself as the party representing the anti-globalization movement in the Italian political scene. Nothwithstanding, during that congress the party included some recognized factions, which opposed the line imposed by Bertinotti: the hardline communists of Being Communists (26.2%), what remains of the late faction led by Armando Cossutta, and trotskyists of Critical Left, Communist Project and HammerSickle (14.6% altogether).

Communist Project left the party shortly after the 2006 general election because of its opposition to the participation of the party in The Union and Prodi II Cabinet: a group led by Marco Ferrando formed the Communist Workers' Party, while others, led by Francesco Ricci formed the Communist Alternative Party. A tiny minority of the former Communist Project decided not to leave the party and gathered in a new faction named Counter-current.

In February 2007 Senator Franco Turigliatto, one of the leaders of Critical Left along with Salvatore Cannavò, voted against two motions on the government's foreign policy, leading Romano Prodi to temporarily resign as Prime Minister. In April Turigliatto was expelled from the party and thus Critical Left suspended from it. In December the group officially left PRC to be transformed into a party.

At that point Being Communists suffered a split by those who opposed the decision of leader Claudio Grassi to vote in favour of the expulsion of Senator Turigliatto from the party: a group, led by Fosco Giannini, left the faction and launched The Ernesto, without leaving the party itself.

In April 2008, following the severe defeat of the party in the 2008 general election, a group of former Bertinottiani, composed basically of former members of Proletarian Democracy and led by Paolo Ferrero and Giovanni Russo Spena, allied with the other minority factions to force Secretary Franco Giordano to resign. They criticized The Left – The Rainbow alliance and the political line of Fausto Bertinotti.

In the 24–27 July 2008 congress the Refoundation in Movement motion of Ferrero and Grassi (40.1%) faced the bulk of Bertinottiani, who organized themselves around the motion titled Manifesto for the Refoundation (47.6%) with Nichi Vendola as standard-bearer. The Ernesto of Giannini and Counter-current (7.7%), HammerSickle of Claudio Bellotti (3.2%) and a minor group of former Bertinottiani called "Disarm, Renew, Refound" (1.5%) decided to join forces with the Ferrero-Grassi group. Vendola, defeated by Ferrero, announced the creation of a new minority faction, Refoundation for the Left (RpS).^[3][12]

On 24 January 2009 that faction finally left the party to form the Movement for the Left. However several members of RpS led by Augusto Rocchi decided to stay in the PRC and launched To the Left with Refoundation.

Popular support

The electoral results of the Communist Refoundation Party in the 10 most populated Regions of Italy are shown in the table below.^[13]

	1994 general	1995 regional	1996 general	1999 European	2000 regional	2001 general	2004 European	2005 regional	2006 general
Piedmont	5.9	9.3	10.3	4.6	5.5	5.9	6.6	6.4	5.9
Lombardy	5.1	7.7	6.8	4.0	6.4	5.0	5.6	5.7	5.5
Veneto	4.4	5.0	5.3	2.8	3.0	3.9	3.9	3.5	3.9
Emilia-Romagna	6.6	7.6	8.3	5.0	5.8	5.5	6.3	5.7	5.6
Tuscany	10.1	11.1	12.5	7.4	6.7	6.9	9.1	8.2	8.2
Lazio	6.6	9.2	10.4	4.9	5.4	5.2	7.1	5.9	7.4
Campania	6.9	9.2	9.1	4.0	3.8	4.8	6.0	4.1	6.1
Apulia	7.0	8.1	7.5	3.3	3.6	4.7	6.0	5.1	5.7
Calabria	9.3	8.7	10.0	4.3	3.0	3.4	5.8	5.1	6.0
Sicily	-	4.3 (1996)	7.0	2.2	2.4 (2001)	3.2	3.6	- (2006)[14]	3.2
ITALY	6.1	-	8.6	4.3	-	5.0	6.1	-	5.8

Symbols

• 

  1992

• 

  1999

• 

  2004

Leadership

• Secretary: Sergio Garavini (1991–1994), Fausto Bertinotti (1994–2006), Franco Giordano (2006–2008), Paolo Ferrero (2008–present)
  • Coordinator: Walter De Cesaris (2005–2008)
• President: Armando Cossutta (1991–1998)

• Party Leader in the Chamber of Deputies: Lucio Magri (1992–1994), Famiano Crucianelli (1994–1995), Oliviero Diliberto (1995–1998), Franco Giordano (1998–2006), Gennaro Migliore (2006–2008)
• Party Leader in the Senate: Lucio Libertini (1992–1993), Ersilia Salvato (1993–1995), Fausto Marchetti (1995–1996), Luigi Marino (1996–1998), Giovanni Russo Spena (1998–2001), Giorgio Malentacchi (2001–2002), Luigi Malabarba (2002–2006), Giovanni Russo Spena (2006–2008)
• Party Leader in the European Parliament: Luigi Vinci (1994–2004), Roberto Musacchio (2004–present)

Notes

1. ^ http://home.rifondazione.it/xisttest/content/view/8823/457/
2. ^ Trudell, Megan (2007-01-04). "Rifondazione votes for war". International Socialism. http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=284&issue=113. Retrieved 2007-01-05. 
3. ^ ^{a b} http://www.corriere.it/politica/08_luglio_27/vendola_ritiro_8b3b2250-5bb4-11dd-b836-00144f02aabc.shtml
4. ^ http://www.asca.it/news-PRC__SERVE_UNA_NUOVA_SINISTRA__VENDOLA_CONSUMA_LA_SCISSIONE_(IL_PUNTO)-804738-ORA-.html
5. ^ http://www.repubblica.it/2009/01/sezioni/politica/liberazione-ferrero/vendola-chianciano/vendola-chianciano.html
6. ^ http://www.asinistraconrifondazione.org/b/
7. ^ http://www.repubblica.it/2009/01/sezioni/politica/elezioni-2009/pdc-prc/pdc-prc.html
8. ^ http://www.radioradicale.it/scheda/283813
9. ^ http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2009/luglio/19/via_nuova_Federazione_della_sinistra_co_8_090719056.shtml
10. ^ http://www.affaritaliani.it/politica/comunisti_riuniti221110.html
11. ^ http://www.federazionedellasinistra.com/federazione/?p=3262
12. ^ http://www.manifestoperlarifondazione.net/?p=194
13. ^ http://elezionistorico.interno.it/index.php
14. ^ PRC formed a joint-list with SDI, IdV, UDEUR, the Greens and PdCI to surpass the 5% threshold. The list, named Uniti per la Sicilia, scored 5.1% and 4 regional deputies were elected, 3 SDI and 1 IdV.

External links

• Official web site