The former prime minister and secretary of the DC, Ciriaco De Mita, died this morning at 7 in the Villa dei Pini nursing home in Avellino. This was announced by the deputy mayor, Walter Vigilante. He thus disappears, at the age of 94, one of the protagonists of the First Republic. The former prime minister had been hospitalized on Sunday 3 April in the neurology department of the San Giuseppe Moscati hospital in Avellino. The hospitalization was necessary for a series of neurological and cardiological tests after the operation on the femur undergone last February 25, following a domestic accident.
After recovering, De Mita had returned home and had embarked on a rehabilitation process. At first, De Mita’s conditions did not seem worrying, but a post on the social networks of his daughter Antonia had aroused much concern: “My father is serious” he wrote, revealing that he had not been able to meet the former leader of the Christian Democrats and thus raising concern.
Luigi Ciriaco De Mita was born in Nusco (Avellino) in 1928. In his long and successful political career he was prime minister from 1988 to 1989, secretary and then president of the Christian Democrats from 1982 to 1989, four times minister and parliamentarian for a whole generation.
His entry into the DC dates back to 1953 in the current of the “basic Left”, in 1956 he was elected national councilor of the scudocrociato at the Trento congress. Elected deputy for the first time in 1963, in 1968 he joined a government for the first time as undersecretary of the interior.
Later he was deputy secretary of the party (1969-73) during the secretariat of Arnaldo Forlani. Various ministerial positions between 1973 and 1982: Minister of Industry, Commerce and Crafts in the fourth and fifth Rumor cabinet (1973-74), Minister of Foreign Trade in the fourth Moro cabinet (1974-76 ) and Minister for Extraordinary Interventions in the South of the Andreotti governments of 1976-79.
Following the end of Flaminio Piccoli’s mandate, De Mita was elected national secretary of the DC in May 1982. His party suffered a serious debacle in the 1983 general elections, but despite this De Mita remained in office, being repeatedly confirmed until the congress. in 1989. Just during the eighties he was an opponent within the pentapartite of the PSI leader, Bettino Craxi, and was in conflict within the DC with Andreotti and Forlani (from the initials of the three politicians the acronym CAF was born, although contested by Christian Democrat exponents).
The appreciation of Gianni Agnelli dates back to this period, who in an episode of Mixer defined him “A typical intellectual of Magna Graecia”. In April 1988 the President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga entrusted him with the task of forming a new government, and De Mita found himself at the head of a pentapartite composed of Christian Democrats, Socialists, Republicans, Social Democrats and Liberals, his mandate lasted until July 1989.
In September 1992 he was elected president of the bicameral Commission for institutional reforms and then resigned in March 1993. After the transformation process undertaken by the DC, in 1994 he joined the Italian People’s Party. Member of the parliamentary commission for constitutional reforms between 1997 and 1998, European parliamentarian for the Italian People’s Party (1999), he was re-elected to the Italian Parliament in 2001 and 2006 with the Margherita and the Ulivo.
Still a member of the European Parliament in 2009, his latest political positions are in his Nusco, elected mayor in 2014 and then confirmed in 2019. In 2019 he received the title of Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
Draghi’s condolencesThe Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, expresses his deepest condolences for the death of Luigi Ciriaco De Mita. «Prime Minister between 1988 and 1989, Minister several times, protagonist of the Italian parliamentary and political life in the Christian Democratic left, until the end he was involved in local institutions, as Mayor of the municipality of Nusco. To the family, the condolences of the whole Government ».