Giorgio Napolitano, a former president of Italy who served in that post for an unprecedented two mandates, passed away on Friday evening at the age of 98.
Napolitano was first elected president in 2006 and then again in 2013. In Italy, the position of president is an institutional and not a governmental role, but it still carries with it significant political weight, particularly in delicate moments like when a government is being formed, or when one falls.
Napolitano saw the country through a period of political turbulence in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi’s government.
The politician was elected to the Italian parliament’s lower house in 1953 in the ranks of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). After the dissolution of the PCI in the early 1990s in the wake of fall of the Soviet Union and the Tangentopoli corruption scandal, Napolitano joined Italy’s center-left, and held ministerial positions in Romano Prodi’s government.
Napolitano oversaw the fall of Berlusconi’s center-right government in 2011, against a backdrop of a sexual scandal as well the financial panic tied to Italy’s debt crisis. He then helped appoint a technical government headed by Mario Monti in a maneuver to calm the financial markets. Following national elections in 2013, Napolitano was re-elected to the position of president, a first in the country’s history, and helped usher in its first grand coalition government. Napolitano resigned in 2015, citing his advanced age as the reason.
As president, Napolitano earned the respect of both sides of the political spectrum as an honest broker and a firm leader even against the backdrop of Italy’s famously mercurial politics. Napolitano was a strong supporter of the European Union.
Eminent politicians, including French President Emmanuel Macron and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, expressed their condolences. “Thank you for how you served the institutions, dear president,” said former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
