(ANSAmed) - ROMA, 09 LUG - Nationalist opposition League
leader Matteo Salvini on Thursday said the League had taken up
the mantle of late and much-loved Italian Communist Party (PCI)
leader Enrico Berlinguer.
"The League has taken up the values of a certain Left, of
Berlinguer, on labour, artisans and other issues"; he said ahead
of the opening of the League's new HQ in Rome opposite the PCI's
former, once-glorious and iconic seat in Via delle Botteghe
Oscure.
The PCI's heir, the centre-left democratic Party (PD), was
indignant at the rightist strongman's comparison with one of
Italy's historic leftist leaders.
PD Senate Whip Andrea Marcucci said "I was never a PCI militant
but thinking of Salvini comparing the League to Berlinguer's
party makes me indignant".
PD bigwig Emanuele Fiano voiced "horror and pity" over the
comparison with Berlinguer, a so-called Euro-Communist who
oversaw social democratic policies in much of Italy and whose
1984 funeral was attended by over a million people.
Nicola Fratoianni of the PD's small coalition partner Free and
Equal (LeU) said "the heat has gone to Matteo Salvini's head.
Comparing himself to Berlinguer and likening the League, a
xenophobic party stuffed with ex fascists and turncoats, to the
PCI, is simply ridiculous". (ANSAmed).
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