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Ciriaco De Mita

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Ciriaco De Mita

Luigi Ciriaco De Mita (2 February 1928 – 26 May 2022) was an Italian politician and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Italy from April 1988 to July 1989. A member of Christian Democracy (DC), De Mita served as its secretary and leader from May 1982 until February 1989, becoming one of the most influential politicians in the country, as well as one of the most prominent members of DC's left-wing.

Quotes

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  • (About Giorgio Forattini) Well done, excellent, clever. Sometimes his cartoons are worth more than a feature article. I think he had some difficulty drawing me. [...] I don't think it's his fault; it's probably me who still can't appear as I am.
  • I read Natta's speech. It wasn't a dense work of theoretical analysis, but rather a collection of clichés, delivered well by a student from the Normale. I didn't find a single coherent idea in it. Essentially, the speech was based on the assumption that the PCI had a strategy aimed at seizing power. If I have to give my opinion, Berlinguer died today for the PCI, not in June.
  • I believe in words. God gave humans the power of speech so that they could communicate. A person's morality is the relationship between their words and their intentions.
  • Speech at the conference of the Avellino branch of the Christian Democracy on 22 February 1987, broadcast on the same date by the Campania regional TG3 channel.

Nowadays, politics is done through political programs. However, political programs do not contain the solution for a country's growth. The birth or rebirth of a country lies in words. Because words contain the rules. And there can be no programme without rules first.

  • It's not that Taviani was a man of reflection. Rather, he was a pragmatic man. [5]
  • Some people might be surprised, but I don't have any prejudices against Di Pietro either.

Provided he shakes off the delusion that he is God's judge.

  • (About Enrico Berlinguer and Alessandro Natta's succession as General Secretary of the PCI) Despite his contradictions and pauses, this leader of the Italian left ultimately gave the impression of bringing about a qualitative leap in politics. Natta did not. 
  • Corriere della Sera, 11 July 2010.
  • If something difficult seems easy to you, it means you haven't understood anything.
  • Franco Gerardi, Il mio amico De Mita, in Mondoperaio, 3/2015, p. 93.
  • We have become a country that does not think, does not grow, no longer has hope, and is drowning in amoralism, which is worse than immorality.
  • Corriere della Sera, 11 July 2010.
  • [Avellino] It's a city where intellectuals and people of culture hide, and those who aren't people of culture thrive.
  • When I die, I will continue to speak.

Interviews

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Monica Guerzoni, «Giusto riabilitare Craxi. Era parte di un sistema», Corriere.it, 8 January 2010
  • I say yes, with great conviction, [to the proposal to name a street in Milan after Craxi]. Ten years after his death, it is not only appropriate but perhaps necessary to reflect on the human and political story of Bettino Craxi.
  • The reasons put forward by those who oppose the proposal strengthen my conviction. The justice-focused interpretation of the political situation is inadequate; the crisis has not been resolved – in fact, it has worsened.
  • We cannot change the facts, but we must reflect in order to restore the political dimension to this figure.

With the benefit of hindsight, we have to agree that it is wrong to view the career of the politician Craxi as that of a fugitive criminal. He must be recognised as a key figure in our political history. He wasn't a bit part; he had a plan in mind.

  • Berlusconi is legitimised by the popular vote. I agree with the position – albeit a confused one – of solving the problem by allowing the Prime Minister to govern and stay any trials. I support Enrico Morando's proposal to reinstate parliamentary immunity.
At the launch of the book entitled La storia d'Italia non è finita, Italian Chamber of Deputies, Sala del Mappamondo, 16 October 2012
  • Politics is [politics] if it envisions the new; there is no politics that does not envisage the new.
  • In politics, ideas are important, but to put those ideas into practice, you have to convince others to behave in a way that will make them a reality.
  • The building block of democratic renewal is the community.

Quotes about

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  • There is a shy side to De Mita. There is also a grumpy De Mita. He was also introverted. He didn't find it easy to get along with other people. And sometimes he's suspicious, very suspicious. [...] Someone who doesn't mould himself to the person in front of him to win their approval, but who likes to speak his mind and tells you what he thinks to your face. In short, he was a tough guy. Cunning and tough. And sometimes mean.
  • Giampaolo Pansa, De Mita è bello perché è vario, L'Espresso, 20 June 1982.
  • Ciriaco was an authoritarian secretary. That's not a criticism; it might even be a virtue of his, but he's authoritarian.
  • De Mita's penis is tiny – exactly the same size as it was when he was a baby. After all, as we know, what nature creates, Ciriaco preserves. Andreotti? Oh, Andreotti doesn't have a penis at all: he's become hunchbacked from looking for it.
  • Roberto Benigni, quoted in Roberto D'Agostino, Chi è, chi non è, chi si crede di essere, Arnoldo Mondadori, 1988.
  • De Mita is very intelligent, and he is trying to make the most of the current divisions between the Socialists and the Communists.
+Sandro Pertini, quoted in Pertini rimpiange Berliguer. "Natta un freddo professore", La Stampa, 2 July 1986.
  • De Mita should put forward a proposal to renew the DC secretariat, as long as he doesn't propose a De Mita with a moustache.
  • De Mita talks about his undoubted political acumen, but he fails to mention that, in Campania, he and Bassolino are the architects of a ruthless, feudal-style power machine.
  • I consider De Mita [...] a typical intellectual from the Mezzogiorno, with that philosophical background and that tradition of thought typical of Magna Graecia.
  • At first, I believed De Mita's intention to change the Christian Democratic Party, but the party is stronger than him.
  • Luciano Lama, from an interview by Salvatore Gatti, Io, il Pci e il nuovo riformismo, L'Espresso, 16 December 1984.
  • Finally, the parties had put the wrong man in the wrong place. De Mita is not without his merits. However, he was completely lacking in the qualities needed for government. This was evident when he was a minister; he achieved little, and what little he did achieve would usually have been better left unfinished.
  • I shouldn't speak, as I was Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, but De Mita's main flaw is that he wants to respond to everyone who speaks, one by one. He never waits for the discussion on a point to be concluded.
  • When, among many other trials, I had a trial not with a judge, but with a politician of De Mita's calibre, whom I had implicated in the mismanagement of the funds allocated for Irpinia after the earthquake, I could not find a single lawyer in that vast region who would come to testify in my favour. The only person who defended me was the very person who was supposed to prosecute me: Mariconda, the public prosecutor at the Court of Monza. He did not defend me on the merits of my accusations, which he had no basis to assess, but on the right he recognised I had to make them. The use of the fifty to sixty thousand billion allocated for Irpinia also remained a mystery.
  • Indro Montanelli, Corriere della Sera, 12 January 1997.
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