Fabio Mussi

Fabio Mussi (2007)

Fabio Mussi (born January 22, 1948 in Piombino , Livorno province ) is an Italian politician ( PCI , (P) DS , SD ). He was a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 1992 to 2008 and its Vice-President from 2001 to 2006. From May 17, 2006 to May 8, 2008, he was Minister of Education and Research in the second Prodi cabinet . From 2007 to 2008 he was the national coordinator of the small party Sinistra Democratica (Democratic Left).

Political career

As the son of a working-class family, Mussi joined the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) in 1965 , for which he initially worked in university politics. From 1967 to 1970 he studied humanities at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa , where he met Massimo D'Alema . In 1972 he completed his studies in philosophy at the University of Pisa with a thesis on Theodor W. Adorno and the Frankfurt School .

In 1979, Mussi was elected to the central committee of his party, while at the same time he was able to continue his journalistic career at the communist weekly Rinascita , where he was given responsibility for the cultural pages as well as the press and propaganda department and was promoted to deputy editor-in-chief in the same year. From 1980 to 1984 he was regional secretary of the PCI in Calabria and then moved up to the national party executive. From 1986 to 1988 he also worked as one of the chief editors ( condirettori ) of the daily newspaper L'Unità .

In the course of the process of change of his party to the Partito Democratico della Sinistra in 1991 and to the Democratici di Sinistra (DS) in 1998, Mussi became an important leading figure of the left wing of the party known as Correntone (German "great current"). In 1992 he was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies for the first time in his Tuscan constituency (Pisa - Livorno - Lucca - Massa-Carrara ) . From 1994 to 2006 he was a constituency member of Piombino . In the legislative period from 2001 to 2006, Mussi was Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies. After the electoral victory of his party in the center-left alliance led by Romano Prodi , he was appointed research minister in his government in May 2006. On May 29, 2006 he was also elected to the municipal council of Rio Marina ( Elba Island ).

At the 4th party congress of the DS (April 19-21, 2007) Mussi ran against Piero Fassino for the party chairmanship, but lost with 15% of the votes cast. He spoke out against the majority intention of his party to merge with other forces in the center-left L'Unione - especially the Christian-social-liberal party La Margherita - to form the Partito Democratico (PD). On May 5, 2007, as announced, he left the party and founded the Sinistra Democratica with like-minded people as a secular - socialist force to the left of the PD.

Mussi was the national coordinator of the party, which had 21 seats in the House of Representatives and 12 in the Senate through the conversion of DS MPs. For the parliamentary elections in 2008 , the SD joined other small left and green parties in the La Sinistra - L'Arcobaleno (Rainbow Left) alliance . However, this failed with 3.1% of the votes at the parliamentary entry barrier. As a result, Mussi and his party left parliament. He handed over the position of coordinator to MEP Claudio Fava . This led the SD to merge into Sinistra Ecologia Libertà (SEL) in 2009/10 . In this, however, Mussi no longer had a leading role.

Web links

• Biography at the Italian Government (Italian)
• Profile at the Italian Chamber of Deputies (Italian)