Parisi was born in
San Mango Piemonte,
Salerno,
Campania on 13 September 1940. He moved soon with his family to
Sassari,
Sardinia. A strong supporter of
Romano Prodi, in 1995 he founded, with him, the
Olive Tree coalition, and on 30 November 1999 he won a
by-election to replace him in the
Italian Chamber of Deputies. 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
Olivists' 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. Parisi,
Enrico Morando and
Stefano Ceccanti presented a motion asking for the immediate calling of
primary elections open to all members of the party. 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 92 votes out of 1,258. ==References==