Democrats of the Left

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The Democrats of the Left (Italian: Democratici di Sinistra) is the main Italian left-wing political party, part of the Ulivo electoral coalition.

The party developed from the PDS (Partito democratico della Sinistra, "Democratic Party of the Left"), which in turn was a reshaping of the Italian Communist Party into a social democratic party. Under the leadership of Massimo D'Alema, the party merged with other minor like-minded movements, and took the current name, removing the hammer and sickle from its symbol and substituting it with a rose.

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Current leadership

The current secretary is Piero Fassino, elected with 61.8% of party members' votes during the second National Congress in November of 2001. Piero Fassino was the candidate of a mainstream Third Way tendency. The candidacy of Giovanni Berlinguer, endorsed by radical democrats, democratic socialists and the CGIL trade union, gained 34.1% of party members votes. The right wing of the party, led by Enrico Morando, got 4.1%.

Piero Fassino has been re-elected during the third National Congress, in february 2005 with 79.1% of party members' votes. No other candidates were present, but left-wing candidates ran for congressional delegates and received 14.56% of party members votes won by the DS Left—returning to win, 3.98% by the DS Left for socialism and 2.36% by the Ecologist Left.

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Internal structure

Inside the party are several organized political tendency associations. On the right wing the Liberal association have a strongly moderate Third Way or Radical middle political agenda.

The left-wing opposition is lead by the DS Left—returning to win (Italian: Sinistra DS—per tornare a vincere), a left-of-Third Way democratic socialist tendency. Others in left-wing opposition are the smaller DS Left for socialism (Italian: Sinistra DS per il socialismo), left-wing democratic socialists, and the Ecologist Left (Italian: Sinistra Ecologista), left-wing environmentalists.

The core of the social democratic party majority isn't related to a specific tendency association, although several smaller movements, splits of former centrist or center-left italian parties, relate to it. These are the Labourists—Liberal Socialists (Italian: Laburisti—Socialisti Liberali), the Reformist Europe (Italian: Europa Riformista) and the sicilian Reformist Movement (Italian: Movimento Riformista) all from Italian Socialist Party, the Republican Left (Italian: Sinistra Repubblicana) from Italian Republican Party and the Social Christians (Italian: Cristiano Sociali) from the left-wing of Democrazia Cristiana.

Inside the party, there is often a somewhat simplistic distinction between reformists (riformisti) and radicals (radicali or massimalisti), indicating respectively the mainstream or the left-wing area, formerly know as correntone.

Several personalities formerly inside or close to the left-wing area of the party, as Pietro Folena, Pietro Ingrao and Achille Occhetto, are now approaching or joining the Communist Refoundation Party which, from his sixth congress held in January 2005, is moving torward a more heterogenous, non-sectarian and strongly pacifist kind of left-wing party.

In the autonomous region of Sardinia the Left-Wing Democrats are present under the name DS—Sardinian Federalist Left (Italian: DS—Sinistra Federalista Sarda). In the autonomous region of Val d'Aosta they are also present as Valdaostan Left (French: Gauche Valdôtaine), in the autonomous region of Trentino-South Tyrol also as South-Tyrolese Left-wing Democrats (German: Südtiroler Linksdemokraten) and in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia also as Levi Demokrati (Slovenian for Left-Wing Democrats), in the towns where the Slovenian minority is present.