Euronews reporter Alfredo Ravanolo spoke to Paolo Mazzanti, editor of Ask@News, a news agency based in Rome. He briefly described the new president
ADVERTISEMENTEuronews reporter Alfredo Ravanolo spoke to Paolo Mazzanti, editor of Ask@News, a news agency based in Rome.
He briefly described the new president of Italy Sergio Mattarella.
“He came to politics late in life, after his brother Piersanti, former governor of the Sicily Region, was killed by the Mafia.
“Many people hope that this kind of figure will step up the fight against the mafia and organized crime,” said Mazzanti, adding that, “Renzy played the part of ‘director’ and he was awarded with an important success. Not as a chief of the government, but as head of the Democratic Party, the first party in our parliament.”
Mattarella’s political roots are in Italy’s defunct Christian Democrat party that his father Bernardo, an anti-fascist, helped to found after the war.
Though Mattarella is not seen as having vast international experience, he did serve as defense minister in two different centre-left governments, from 1999 to 2001.
In 1990, Mattarella resigned as education minister to protest a decree that favoured Berlusconi’s media empire, and three years later he drafted a voting law, which has since been changed, that was used when Berlusconi won his first of three national elections in 1994.