Oliviero Diliberto

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Oliviero Diliberto (born 13 October 1956 in Cagliari) is an Italian politician.^[1] He has been leader of the Party of Italian Communists.

Early life

Oliviero Diliberto was born in a family of public servants (his father Marco was employed as attorney in the Administration of the Region of Sardinia, his mother Lella was a teacher). His youth is scarred by the untimely death of his father in 1971, after which he had to be a fatherly role for his younger siblings: his sister Ludovica, then eight years old, and his brother Alessio, who was born just two months before. Diliberto becomes involved with politics in 1969 at age 13, when he was in high school. It is a time of turmoil in Italian schools, and young Oliviero quickly rises through the ranks of the student movement during his University studies. He eventually becomes Secretary of the FGCI (Federation of Young Italian Communists, the youth organisation of the PCI) for the province of Cagliari in 1978, the same year of his graduation.

Fascinated by the philosophic thought of Michel Foucault, after graduating from high school he traveled for Paris where, to support himself, he briefly worked at the city morgue, preparing corpses that had to undergo autopsy.

From 1978 to 1986 he earns scholarships to further his law studies in

Political career

A former member of the

First elected as MP in 1994 for the Communist Refoundation Party, Diliberto left his party in 1998 in contrast with the leadership's line about a motion of no confidence in which Romano Prodi was defeated. So Diliberto, together with Armando Cossutta and others, founded the Party of Italian Communists, of which he became the secretary. Diliberto then served as Minister of Justice in the first government of Massimo D'Alema, becoming one of the only two party members which were part of that government. He maintained the position until 2000, leaving voluntarily in the reshuffle, in order to concentrate on the party.

On taking office as Minister of Justice, he declared to the press his pride in being "The second Communist appointed as Minister of Justice after Palmiro Togliatti", and made a point of having the same desk previously used by the postwar Communist leader restored and placed in his office at the Ministry.

In November 2004 he was widely criticized for meeting with the leader of