Reuters News Agency Article

USA Today article

Open Democracy.net article

Wikipedia article including results of 2001 election

And here is Luxuria's own website!

[ 27 February 2006: Message edited by: lagatta ]

Now, I wish luck to Rifonazione comunista.
But as for your statement, shouldnt the parties concentrate on workers rights, pulling out troops from Iraq, and condemning globalization first ?
Not to offend anyone, just common sense...
Edit: I thought he was the party leader. I see now. My mistake.

[ 01 March 2006: Message edited by: BetterRed ]

quote:

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workers' rights, pulling out troops from Iraq, and condemning globalization first ?

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The head of Rifondazione comunista is Fausto Bertinotti, a straight male (as far as I know) of a certain age with a typical trade-unionist and party background.

quote:

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Joey the Rat accused of trying to influence national election

A meeting between right-of center Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Pope Benedict was cancelled Tuesday after Italy's left coalition accused the Vatican of trying to use influence the outcome of this spring's election.

The opposition leftist party of Romano Prodi is ahead in the polls and poised to win the election next month.

Prodi said the meeting between the Pope and Berlusconi, just weeks before the election, was little more than a photo-op for the conservative Prime Minister.

[...]

The meeting was condemned by other members of Prodi's coalition. Green Party leader Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio said that he respects "the right of the Church to address questions of values, but it is very serious to receive only one of the candidates for prime minister just ahead of the ballot."

Communist leader Fausto Bertinotti, whose party is also a member of the coalition called for the Vatican to cancel the meeting.

In the end it was Berlusconi who cancelled but he accused Prodi of playing politics.

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At a huge (250,000+) feminist demonstration in Milan in January, in support of the 1978 law decriminalising abortion, the demonstrators were also shouting out "We want Zapatero"

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[ 10 March 2006: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

(And then I wind up meeting a guy from frigging Germany... Go figure)...

Heph, the main frustration gay male friends had while visiting the Boot was that all the lovely men were so well-turned-out (positive gay stereotype alert) and not only that, walking arm in arm with friends, that my gay visitor friends couldn't believe they weren't all gay! But don't worry - enough of them are, as anywhere.

Perhaps there aren't many lions on the loose in Rome any more, but there are lots of their smaller cousins even around the Colosseum.

By the way, a famous Italian student movement, La Pantera, was named for a panther who escaped from a zoo just as the movement was taking off.

[ 10 March 2006: Message edited by: lagatta ]

quote:

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Originally posted by lagatta:
At a huge (250,000+) feminist demonstration in Milan in January, in support of the 1978 law decriminalising abortion, the demonstrators were also shouting out "We want Zapatero" - in reference to Spain's socialist coalition's far more courageous stand on same-sex marriage.

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quote:

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Spain's new prime minister is internationally best known for his decision last month to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq, which drew the ire of the Bush administration.

But domestically, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is attracting attention for making female empowerment a top priority.

Newsstands abound with pictures of Zapatero surrounded by colorfully dressed female ministers and Spanish media have made much of the cultural and visual shift from previous governments of mostly gray-suited men.

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"I'm a radical feminist. In my experience, out of every four people in politics, if they are women, 3 are really good. If they are men, only one and a half to two. That's my experience. For public life and for democratic coexistence, I think being a woman is a great advantage. Because they know how to share things better than men do. And politics is all about knowing how to share."

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Spaniards use both their maternal and paternal names, however, you should always address someone by their paternal name only. For example, 'Señor John Smith Wilson' (Smith being the father's name and Wilson the mother's name) would be addressed as 'Señor Smith'.

Except Zapatero.

In Iberian countries people have at least two surnames (family names). One is inherited from the father, the other from the mother. Parents both give their father's first part of his family name to their children as a new family name.

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In most Spanish speaking countries, the father's surname is written before the mother's surname (although there are occasional exceptions to this rule). Thus, for instance, Vicente Fox Quesada is Señor Fox (Mr. Fox in English), not Señor Quesada, and "Fox" is not his middle name.

In Portuguese speaking countries, the father's surname is in most cases after the mother's surname. In these countries, it is very frequent that children get two surnames from each of their parents, thus having usually the last surname of each of their grandparents.

The traditional naming conventions are now changing as attitudes toward gender equality evolve. In Portugal, since 1977, the child's last name can come either from the father or from the mother, but the latter is still very uncommon. The law in Spain has undergone a similar change; as in Portugal, it has had little effect on custom.

Occasionally, a person with a common paternal surname and an uncommon maternal surname becomes widely known by the maternal surname, as with the artist Pablo Ruiz Picasso, best known simply as "Picasso", or the poet Federico García Lorca, often known simply as "Lorca", or even the Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, best known as "Zapatero".

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"I'm a radical feminist. In my experience, out of every four people in politics, if they are women, 3 are really good. If they are men, only one and a half to two. That's my experience. For public life and for democratic coexistence, I think being a woman is a great advantage. Because they know how to share things better than men do. And politics is all about knowing how to share."

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A month before Italy's hard- fought elections, prosecutors in Milan asked Friday that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and a high-profile British lawyer be tried on charges of judicial corruption in a case that is also causing political turmoil in Britain.

The prosecutors released no details, but the case has been widely reported in the Italian media, and centers on whether Berlusconi ordered $600,000 to be paid in 1999 to the lawyer, David Mills, an expert on offshore corporate law, in exchange for providing false testimony on behalf of Berlusconi in two other cases involving fraud and corruption charges. A judge must now rule on the indictment requests.

. . . .

Mills has ties to the innermost circles of the Labour government. His wife, Tessa Jowell, is Britain's culture minister and one of Prime Minister Tony Blair's closest allies. In the last few weeks, the British newspapers have been dominated by articles about Mills's complicated business affairs, casting an increasingly dark shadow on his marriage with Jowell, who has said that she knew nothing about his financial activities.

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The media magnate refused to answer when state TV journalist Lucia Annunziata asked about his business affairs and the Iraq conflict.

"You can't tell me what to do," he said as the conversation descended into bickering and he accused her of bias.

"This is my show, I'll decide the questions," Ms Annunziata retorted.

As he left the studio, his microphone was still attached and he could be heard shouting: "And they say I'm the one who controls Rai!"

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The prime minister faces his first TV debate with opposition leader Romano Prodi on Tuesday as the race hots up for the 9-10 April election and his coalition lags behind in opinion polls by several points.

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"You've been in government for five years and you speak as if you were the opposition. How can you carry out such a deception on the country?" Mr Prodi said.

He also attacked the prime minister on the issue of the alleged conflict of interest stemming from prime minister's media empire.

Mr Berlusconi fired back: " Really, what cheek! In five years we have carried out more reforms than all the previous governments in the history of the republic put together."

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[ 16 March 2006: Message edited by: Heavy Sharper ]

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Pope Benedict used a meeting with Italy's right of center party o Thursday to launch a new salvo against same-sex marriage and the left of center coalition that supports domestic partner law fired back accusing the pontiff of trying to influence next month's election. 

Benedict told members of Premier Silvio Berlusconi's European People's Party (EPP) that the Vatican would oppose "attempts to make [marriage] juridically equivalent to radically different forms of unions which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization."

The church's stand, he said, was "non-negotiable". 

The remarks, broadcast on Italian television, were seen as an endorsement of the EPP which has steadfastly refused to pass LGBT civil rights legislation.

Members of Romano Prodi opposition leftists pounced on the remarks.

"It is ever more clear the Church hierarchy have decided to jump in to the election campaign", said Daniele Capezzone a leftist coalition member.

"It is people who decide whether their relationships constitute a family ... Not everyone shares the Pope's point of view," said openly gay Franco Grillini, another leftist member.

Prodi's leftists are ahead in public opinion polls with just 10 days left in the campaign.

---

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Originally posted by Heavy Sharper:
Even if l'Unione manages to win this election, it's important to keep in mind that Prodi is not as socially liberal as Zapatero in Spain.

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Berlusconi calls rivals `idiots'

quote:

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Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi used an Italian obscenity to describe those planning to vote for his opponent, drawing criticism yesterday from opposition parties who called the leader "vulgar and coarse.''

"I have too much respect for the intelligence of Italians to believe that there are so many `coglioni' around to vote against their best interest," he said.

The word "coglioni" is a vulgar equivalent for "idiot" or "cretin." It is common in colloquial Italian but virtually unheard of in political speeches or business settings.

Antonio Di Pietro, a former anti-corruption prosecutor turned centre-left lawmaker, said: "Better coglioni than Berlusconi.''

Berlusconi, in office since 2001 and blamed by many for Italy's struggling economy, was trailing in opinion polls published until late last month, and performed poorly in the first televised faceoff. Berlusconi reiterated his accusation that Prodi is a front-man for a coalition led by Communists.

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As the article says, such mild obscenities are common in street Italian, but not in official public speech.

If progressive Italians do not use full force to take down a right-wing government without a mandate, they deserve to live under right-wing repression.

[ 09 April 2006: Message edited by: Heavy Sharper ]

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Originally posted by lagatta:
Coglioni literally means testicles so that gives you an idea of the "register" of the expression. (It is similar to the use of "couillon" in French - while the more common French word for testicles in a literal sense is "couilles"). It is a common expression, as is cazzo which means penis, but is used more often as a vulgarity than to describe the centrepiece of that set: "Che cazzo fa?" What the fuck are you doing?

As the article says, such mild obscenities are common in street Italian, but not in official public speech.

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quote:

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testa di cazzo † Cockhead note Used to insult someone, without a really specific reason, just because you disagree with him/her

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Originally posted by skdadl:
This article in the business section of today's Observer gives a quick overview of Italy's poor economic performance during the Berlusconi years (poor, of course, in the terms of classical economics).

An innocent question: if, in classical economic terms, the fixes for Italy's problems of growth and uncompetitiveness would have been labour-market reform, why would a right-winger like Berlusconi not have tried to ram through some of the measures taken by, eg, the Germans? If he was, for a long time, powerful enough to fiddle with the laws and the courts, why did he not try to work his will on the economy?

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Maybe he's trying to lull Italians into a false sense of security.

Chirac's gang has taken a long time to bite too...

As for my previous post, I'm referring to electoral reforms that make it theoretically possible for HoF to form a majority government while winning less of the popular vote than l'Unione. Unlike Bush's minority election, which was sanctioned by an electoral system that's over 2 centuries old, an HoF minority election would be sanctioned by reforms that the government has made over the past couple of years...And if Italians put up with that, I'm not sure if they deserve better.

[ 09 April 2006: Message edited by: Heavy Sharper ]

Turnout extremely strong in North and around Rome...I think that's good for Berlusconi...:-(

[Long url removed by Michelle. Try tinyurl or babble's URL function.]

[ 10 April 2006: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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The Nexus projections, carried on the state broadcaster Rai, gave Mr Berlusconi's forces 49.9% in the Chamber of Deputies (lower house), and Mr Prodi's bloc 49.6%.

For the Senate the projections gave Mr Berlusconi's bloc 158 seats and Mr Prodi's 151.

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Some of these people are far worse than even Jorge Haider, and yet Italy faces no ostracisation for electing them and even welcoming them into the governing coalition.

Alleanza NAZIonale is "post-fascist" far-right. Its supporters consist entirely of the same sort of violent hooligans affiliated with the party who attacked Communist transvetite candidate Vladimir Luxuria. They won over 12% of the vote.

Lega Nord is a chauvinistic autonomous movement in Northern Italy espousing xenophobia and far-right policies. Many consider them more extreme than AN. They won over 4% of the vote.

Alternativa Sociale Mussolini is so disgusting that it doesn't even deserve explanation. People stupid enough to vote for hypocritical neo-Nazi prima donna whose main "contributions" to this world include bad pornography and bad pro-fascist films don't even deserve access to a ballot.

Fiamma Tricolore is the most explicity far-right of the lot and has won 226,192 votes too many.

These two parties won over 1% of the vote between them.

http://politiche.interno.it/politiche/camera060409/C0000000.htm

[ 10 April 2006: Message edited by: Heavy Sharper ]

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Romani Prodi has claimed victory for his centre-left coalition in the lower house, following Italy's election.
Mr Prodi made the claim during a rally in the capital Rome, telling cheering supporters that "victory has arrived".

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quote:

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Originally posted by Aristotleded24:
Something good did happen today, at least:

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Originally posted by Heavy Sharper:
What's pathetic is the absurdly high number of Italians who support fascists, neo-fascists, the allegedly non-fascist far-right (Now that's a laugh...), and those like Berlusconi who are willing to work with them in government.

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What's pathetic is the absurdly high number of rabble's management (i.e. more than 1) that support (or at least offer apologetics for) crushing workers' rights.

quote:

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ROME - Final results in the two-day vote ending Monday showed Romano Prodi's center-left winning control in the lower house of parliament, with 49.8 percent of the vote compared to 49.7 won by Berlusconi's conservatives. The winning coalition is automatically awarded 55 percent of the seats, according to a new electoral law.

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Who's the coglioni now, Silvio?

Why you and those corrupt managers, of course.

[ 10 April 2006: Message edited by: Heavy Sharper ]

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Originally posted by frandroid_atreides:
84% people voted... That's amazing turnout.

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Ulivo (220 seats) is itself a federation of Massimo D'Alema's Left Democrats (ex-Euro-communists), the centre-left Margherita of Romano Prodi and Francesco Rutelli (which aims to combine the christian-democratic, the liberal-democratic and the european-reformist cultures, and Luciana Sbarbati's little left-liberal European Republican Movement (which split from the old little Republican Party when it joined Berlusconi's coalition).

Fausto Bertinotti's Communist Refoundation Party (41 seats), the furthest left group which includes some Troskyists

La Rosa Nel Pugno (The Rose In The Fist) (18 seats), itself a federation of the left-libertarian Radical Party of Emma Bonino, Enrico Boselli's Democratic Socialists, the Luca Coscioni Association (against prohibition of embryonic stem cells research), and the Socialist Youth.

Comunisti Italiani (16 seats), Eurocommunists who split from the Communist Refoundation Party when it took a stand against the previous Prodi government, led by Oliviero Diliberto.

Italy of Values (16 seats), populist and anti-corruption, headed by former magistrate Antonio Di Pietro

Greens (15 seats)led by Pecoraro Scanio, Italy's first openly bisexual minister.

Clemente Mastella's Popular-UDEUR (10 seats), centrist. He was in Berlusconi's first cabinet but split with him.

The South Tyrol People's Party (4 seats), an ethnic German minority party.

quote:

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Originally posted by skdadl:
I'll bet Audra is chewing her nails to hear that Berlusconi may have survived to delay all his court cases another day.

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Four years ago Bucchino went to Uganda:

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Dr. Gino Bucchino, a member of our community very well known both in and outside of it, is leaving for Angal, Uganda, with his wife Marisa, a physician like him, and their children Filippo and Carolina, in order to serve as volunteers in that village's rural hospital.

Why go Dr. Bucchino?

"Because I want to be a certain kind of physician."

"Unfortunately, our community did not grow much on the political and cultural level. . . our people often arrived here with nothing, had to work hard to survive, and when they succeeded they were catapulted in the hyperconsumeristic system of the United States. They had neither time nor will to think that beyond money there are other values. Gianni Carparelli told you in his interview that they had no possibility to read, reflect, discuss. I concur. If you throw in the dangerous proximity with the U.S., the picture is complete."

You are really mad at the U.S. You're still a Marxist to the core.

"This is not the problem. Fact is, false democracies frighten me. Do you call democracy what goes on beyond Niagara Falls, where, just as a matter of example, a man can't rely on a good sanitary assistance unless he has a healthy bank account? Luckily, Canada is not like that, but the proximity is dangerous."

"One of the most evident effects of the abandonment is the way Woodbridge roads are designed, seemingly in order to avoid buses entering them. Because a bus means misery, in the opinion of many in our community. Richness, on the contrary, means three or four cars per family."

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[ 12 April 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Originally posted by Drinkmore:
Gee, sounds awful close.

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[ 18 April 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Berlusconi fudged their proportional representation system by deliberately giving the winning coalition a "winner's bonus." An even better example of blowback is that Berlusconi gave "Italians Around the World" seats in parliament, expecting to win most of them.

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Many moderates in the centre-left are concerned Bertinotti could hold Prodi to ransom unless he gets his way.

He was responsible for sinking Prodi's first government when, in 1998, he turned against him in a confidence vote due to disagreements over labour policy.

Prodi's fall eventually led to Berlusconi's 2001 landslide victory and five years in power -- something for which many on the left have still not forgiven Bertinotti.

He has promised he will not sink Prodi a second time, saying his party today is fully signed up to the coalition and its manifesto, rather than merely lending parliamentary support from outside the government as it did in the late 1990s.

Bertinotti has taken a left-wing but hardly extreme stance, calling for lower tax on labour and higher taxes on capital gains -- a policy broadly adopted by Prodi's "Union" coalition.

"There's nothing wrong with being rich, as long as you pay taxes," he has said.

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. . an assembly-line-and-railroad-worker faction sometimes described as Trotskyite threatened to wrench its 11 of Refondazione's 41 winning deputies in parliament out of Rifondazione, should the party back Romano Prodi for premier. Said a faction spokesperson: "This [backing the centrist Prodi] would signal the end of Rifondazione's position at the heart of opposition to the politics of the padroni" (bosses)

. . the Rifondazione's left-wing Pane e Rose (Bread and Roses) faction, led by Marco Ferrando and Francesco Ricci, had already complained that, whereas "everyone is asking if we are trustworthy for Prodi, we want to know if we can trust him." Bertinotti, they charged, is selling the party out to the "sirens of capitalism," with the result that young voters preferred the Party of the Democratic Left (PDS), led by Massimo D'Alema, the party built on the old PCI (Italian Communist Party) which is the second-largest in the Prodi-led center-left coalition. Rifondazione has become "a party of divisive politics that builds false illusions in the working class," said a Pane e Rose editorial yesterday. Losing eleven deputies in parliament is unikely to block either Bertinotti's move into the power circle or the formation of a Prodi government.

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Prodi pressed on with forming a government, holding more than an hour of discussions with Piero Fassino, leader of the Democrats of the Left, the biggest party in a disparate coalition which stretches from moderate Catholics to liberals and Communists.

Fassino made no comment to journalists after exiting Prodi’s central-Rome headquarters, before the 66-year-old former EU Commission president went into discussions with Francesco Rutelli of the centrist Margherita party.

On Monday, the centre-left leader held two hours of talks with Fausto Bertinotti, leader of the Refoundation Communists, one of two communist parties in the coalition.

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Just wanted to give a shout out to CM2 for posting a french linked story.

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Mr Prodi has a majority of only two seats in a chamber of more than 300 senators.

Mr Marini defeated outgoing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's nominee, 87-year-old Giulio Andreotti, by just nine votes.

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Good start. I guess that means that Marina got the votes of all of the seven "senators for life."

But herding this coalition may be like herding cats. In the first round of voting for Speaker of the lower house, Bertinotti got only 305 votes:

quote:

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There were 220 blank ballots in the first round of voting for the speaker of the Chamber and 18 nullified ballots, but the majority voted for the leader of the PRC, who got 305. Voting in the hall of Parliament were 594 representatives, 13 of whom indicated Massimo D'Alema and 12 Francesco Cossiga, but there were even votes for the outgoing Pierferdinando Casini and the new representatives Vladimir Luxuria and Carfagna. According to the regulations in force it is necessary to have a two-thirds majority of the votes in the first three votes in order to be elected speaker. In the fourth round there only needs to be a majority of those present.

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Fausto Bertinotti, the centre-left's official candidate, mustered only 305 and 302 votes respectively in the first two ballots – too few to win – in spite of the fact that Mr Prodi's forces control 348 seats in the 630-seat lower house.

The clear implication of the votes was that several dozen centre-left legislators could not bring themselves to vote for their own candidate.

Mr Bertinotti is the leader of Communist Refoundation, a hardline Marxist party that is often at odds with the centrist and democratic socialist elements of Mr Prodi's bloc.

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the UDEUR would only act as an external ally. "We have decided to remain outside the government. We will support it... and I will be loyal but there will be no betrayal of our (Catholic) values."

Mastella emerged discontented from talks on Thursday with Prodi reportedly focusing on the Senate speakership or two ministries for the UDEUR. "Prodi has not understood the extra value of the UDEUR, the importance of the political centre and the role of moderates."

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[ 29 April 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Originally posted by island empire:
why can't this guy deal with the fact that the left won?

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So Prodi gets a clear victory thanks to Berlusconi's skewed "winner's-bonus-PR" model, and cements it thanks to life senators. Only in Italy?

[ 29 April 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Originally posted by Lard Tunderin' Jeezus:
Sounds a bit more like you're trolling...

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1)Gore indisputably WON the popular vote. There was never any possibility that Berlosconi could say the same.

2)There was a massively organized effort in Florida to illegitimately drive thousands of African American voters off of the voting rolls, and nothing remotely similar was done to conservative voters in Italy(and could not, in fact, possibly have been done, since conservatives were in power in Italy and were in charge of counting the votes).

3)There was nothing comparable in the Italian situation to the U.S. Supreme Court, most of whom were appointed by Republican presidents, awarding the electoral votes of Florida to the Republican candidate.

Time for you to say "Oh, never mind, I was a complete idiot to compare the two situations" Mr "Radical Progressive"(and btw, may I congratulate you on the most Orwellian use of those two words in the history of the English language?).

[ 02 May 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

Prodi works on cabinet:

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Napolitano was elected . . on the votes of the centre left alone. It was a key victory for Prodi. Not only did it mean he could finally take office but it also showed his unwieldly and potentially fractious nine-party coalition could pull together when needed.

The coalition ranges from Communists and anti-clericalists to staunch Catholics, making unity as difficult as it is crucial given Prodi's slim majority. The job of forming a coalition government, difficult at the best of times, is even tougher for Prodi with nine essential allies vying for posts and visibility and all demanding to be contented.

Prodi stressed on Wednesday that he was anxious to have former premier and Democratic Left (DS) chairman Massimo D'Alema on board. . . the press has speculated that the 57-year-old former Communist will be made foreign minister as well as deputy premier.

Meanwhile, the centrist, Catholic-oriented Daisy party - the second biggest party after the DS - is also angling for five or six ministries in the new government. According to the media, Daisy leader and former Rome mayor Francesco Rutelli, who was defeated by Berlusconi in the 2001 election, is likely to be offered the culture ministry and the job of deputy premier along with D'Alema.

Prodi is expected to have a harder task in appeasing his smaller allies, with the media already predicting a battle between centrist, Catholic UDEUR chief Clemente Mastella and top Radical Emma Bonino for the post of defence minister.

There was already an exchange of crossfire earlier this month when Bonino, a former European commissioner for human rights, said she was better qualified for the job than Mastella, who was still bristling at being passed over for the Senate speakership. Meanwhile, the PRC's new chief Franco Giordano, who has taken over from Bertinotti, emerged from talks with Prodi on Thursday to say that things were "looking good" for his hard-left party in the new cabinet.

The PRC, which brought down Prodi's first, 1996-98 government, holds positions that conflict with other coalition parties on several issues including economic and labour market reform and foreign policy.

But Prodi is hoping his allies' undersigning of the alliance's 280-page election programme will limit infighting and has promised a strong leadership legitimised by his landslide victory in unprecedented primary-style elections last October.

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I see here that:

quote:

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On May 7 during a PRC National Political Committee meeting and after Fausto Bertinotti's resignation, Franco Giordano, former chairman of the PRC parliamentary group at the lower chamber (until 2006), has been elected as new PRC national secretary with 68.81% of the vote.

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[ 12 May 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

Democrats of the Left (DS) 9:
- Foreign Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister: Massimo D'Alema
- Health: Livia Turco
- Industry: Pierluigi Bersani
- Universities, scientific research: Fabio Mussi
- Labour: Cesare Damiano
- Civil Service: Luigi Nicolais
- Sports: Giovanna Melandri
- Equal Opportunities: Barbara Pollastrini
- Relations with Parliament and Institutional Reforms: Vannino Chiti

Margherita 9:
- Culture, Deputy Prime Minister: Francesco Rutelli
- Defense: Arturo Parisi
- Interior: Giuliano Amato
- Education: Giuseppe Fioroni
- Agriculture: Paolo De Castro
- Communications: Paolo Gentiloni
- Regional: Linda Lanzillotta
- Government Programme: Giulio Santagata
- Family Policy: Rosy Bindi

Ulivo (220 seats) is itself a federation of Massimo D'Alema's Left Democrats (ex-Euro-communists), the centre-left Margherita of Romano Prodi and Francesco Rutelli (which aims to combine the christian-democratic, the liberal-democratic and the european-reformist cultures, and Luciana Sbarbati's little left-liberal European Republican Movement (which split from the old little Republican Party when it joined Berlusconi's coalition).

Refoundation Communist Party (PRC) 1:
- Welfare: Paolo Ferrero
Fausto Bertinotti's Communist Refoundation Party (41 seats) is the furthest left group. Bertinotti is Speaker of the lower house.

Rose in the Fist 1:
- European Affairs and Foreign Trade: Emma Bonino
La Rosa Nel Pugno (The Rose In The Fist) (18 seats), itself a federation of the left-libertarian Radical Party of Emma Bonino, Enrico Boselli's Democratic Socialists, the Luca Coscioni Association (against prohibition of embryonic stem cells research), and the Socialist Youth.

Italy of Values 1:
- Infrastructure: Antonio Di Pietro
Italy of Values (16 seats), populist and anti-corruption, headed by former magistrate Antonio Di Pietro

Comunisti Italiani 1:
- Transport: Alessandro Bianchi
Comunisti Italiani (16 seats), Eurocommunists who split from the Communist Refoundation Party when it took a stand against the previous Prodi government, led by Oliviero Diliberto.

Greens 1:
- Environment: Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio
Greens (15 seats) led by Pecoraro Scanio, Italy's first openly bisexual minister.

Udeur 1:
Justice: Clemente Mastella
Clemente Mastella's Popular-UDEUR (10 seats), centrist. He was in Berlusconi's first cabinet but split with him.

South Tyrol People's Party 0:
The South Tyrol People's Party (4 seats), an ethnic German minority party.

no party affiliation 1:
- Economy and Finance: Tomasso Padoa-Schioppa