Background
Parisi, Arturo was born on September 13, 1940 in San Mango Piemonte, Salerno, Italy.
Parisi, Arturo was born on September 13, 1940 in San Mango Piemonte, Salerno, Italy.
Graduate in Law.
He was also minister of defence in the cabinet of Prime Minister Romano Prodi from 2006 to 2008. He moved soon with his family in Sassari, Sardinia. He also succeeded Prodi as president of The Democrats from 1999 to 2002, when the party was dissolved.
He then became president of the Federal Assembly of the new Daisy party, and was re-elected to the Chamber in the 2001 general election.
After being re-elected Deputy in the 2006 general election, he was appointed Minister of Defence in the cabinet of Prime Minister Romano Prodi, a position he retained until 2008 when the governing Union coalition crumbled and new elections were called. Meanwhile, Parisi joined the new Democratic Party, formed in 2007 from the merger of the Daisy and the Democrats of the Left, as leader of the Ulivist faction.
On 22 April 2008 he was elected deputy for the fourth time. After the resignation of party secretary Walter Veltroni, the Constituent Assembly of the Democratic Party convened on 21 February 2009 to elect a new leader.
The motion was rejected, so the Assembly itself had to vote for the new secretary.
Parisi ran for the post against former deputy secretary Dario Franceschini, but obtained just 92 votes out of 1,258.
Parisi, Enrico Morando and Stefano Ceccanti presented a motion asking for the immediate calling of primary elections open to all members of the party.