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Democrats of the Left

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Template:Infobox Italy Political Party The Democrats of the Left (Italian: Democratici di Sinistra, often referred to as DS) is the main Italian left-wing political party, part of the Ulivo electoral coalition.

The party developed from the PDS (Partito democratico della Sinistra, "Democratic Party of the Left"), which in turn was a reshaping of the Italian Communist Party into a democratic socialist party. Under the leadership of Massimo D'Alema, the party merged with other minor like-minded movements, and took the current name, removing the hammer and sickle from its symbol and substituting it with a rose. After the narrow victory achieved by center-left in the 2006 general election, the party leadership committed to a future merge with Daisy—Democracy is Freedom, creating a new Democratic Party.

Current leadership

The current secretary is Piero Fassino, elected with 61.8% of party members' votes during the second National Congress in November of 2001. Piero Fassino was the candidate of a mainstream Third Way tendency. The candidacy of Giovanni Berlinguer, endorsed by radical democrats, democratic socialists and the CGIL trade union, gained 34.1% of party members votes. The right wing of the party, led by Enrico Morando, got 4.1%.

Piero Fassino has been re-elected during the third National Congress, in February 2005 with 79.1% of party members' votes. No other candidates were present, but left-wing candidates ran for congressional delegates and received 14.56% of party members votes won by the DS Left—returning to win, 3.98% by the DS Left for socialism and 2.36% by the Ecologist Left.

Internal structure

Inside the party are several organized political tendency associations. On the right wing the Liberal association have a strongly moderate Third Way or Radical middle political agenda.

The left-wing opposition is led by the DS Left—returning to win (Italian: Sinistra DS—per tornare a vincere), a left-of-Third Way democratic socialist tendency. Others in left-wing opposition are the smaller DS Left for socialism (Italian: Sinistra DS per il socialismo), left-wing democratic socialists, and the Ecologist Left (Italian: Sinistra Ecologista), left-wing environmentalists.

The core of the democratic socialist party majority isn't related to a specific tendency association, although several smaller movements, splits of former centrist or center-left Italian parties, relate to it. These are the Labourists—Liberal Socialists (Italian: Laburisti—Socialisti Liberali), the Reformist Europe (Italian: Europa Riformista) and the sicilian Reformist Movement (Italian: Movimento Riformista) all from Italian Socialist Party, the Republican Left (Italian: Sinistra Repubblicana) from Italian Republican Party and the Social Christians (Italian: Cristiano Sociali) from the left-wing of Democrazia Cristiana.

File:DS Placard (corrected).JPG
A political placard of the Democrats of the Left.

Inside the party, there is often a somewhat simplistic distinction between reformists (riformisti) and radicals (radicali or massimalisti), indicating respectively the mainstream or the left-wing area, formerly known as correntone.

Several personalities formerly inside or close to the left-wing area of the party, as Pietro Folena, Pietro Ingrao and Achille Occhetto, are now approaching or joining the Communist Refoundation Party which, from its sixth congress held in January 2005, is moving towards a more heterogeneous, non-sectarian and strongly pacifist kind of left-wing party.

In the autonomous region of Sardinia the Democrats of the Left are present under the name DS—Sardinian Federalist Left (Italian: DS—Sinistra Federalista Sarda). In the autonomous region of Val d'Aosta they are also present as Valdaostan Left (French: Gauche Valdôtaine), in the autonomous region of Trentino-South Tyrol also as South-Tyrolese Democrats of the Left (German: Südtiroler Linksdemokraten) and in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia also as Levi Demokrati (Slovenian for Democrats of the Left), in the towns where the Slovenian minority is present.

In the European Parliament it has 12 MEPs, who sit as part of the Party of European Socialists group.

2006 general election

In the 2006 general election, held on April 9 and April 10, 2006, the Democrats of the Left endorsed the candidacy of Romano Prodi as Prime Minister of Italy. DS presented their symbol for the Senate and ran under the Olive Tree symbol for the Chamber, together with The Daisy and the MRE. The party achieved a 17.17% in the Senate (62 senators) and the Olive Tree reached a 31.20% in the Chamber (220 deputies), more than the sum of its components in the Senate. This, and the narrow margin gained on the centre-right coalition, prompted a discussion on the party's future. As of 2006 the Democrats' leadership is committed to merge with The Daisy and to create a new party, the Democratic Party.

Nine Ministers of Prodi's government are affiliated to the Democrats of the Left, including the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Massimo D'Alema. The current President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano, elected on May 10, 2006, is also a former DS member (as usual, although not mandatory, he renounced to his party affiliation before being sworn in, because the office he was going to assume is considered to be super partes).

Party leadership

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