The left Italian chose Nicola Zingaretti to fight against populists

Supporters ofThe Italian Democratic Party (PD, center-left) chose this Sunday Nicola Zingaretti, a former communist of the middle clbad whose mission is to confront populists in power.

The PD is lagging in the polls since its defeat in June in the parliamentary elections, which brought to power a coalition of Five-star movement (M5S, antisystem) and the League (far right).

Chosen with great advantage, Zingaretti, 53, president of the Lazio region, that of Rome, and sometimes compared to British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, He thanked the voters of social media and promised: "It's time to turn the page."

Former member of the Italian Communist Party, founding member of the PD in 2007 and former MEP, defends European federalism, while criticizing the austerity policies on the continent.

His father, he explains, was a bank employee in Rome who "did not miss a job one day over 40 years", while her mother and her Jewish grandmother escaped the Nazis in 1943, but her great-grandmother died in Auschwitz.

Your big brother Luca is famous in Italy for having played a Sicilian policeman in the popular series "Comisario Montalbano".

Zingaretti had as rivals in the primaries a Roberto Giachetti, 57, the closest candidate of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, more centrist, and Maurizio Martina, 40, former agriculture minister who briefly badumed leadership of the PD when Renzi left after the March legislature failed.

Some 35,000 volunteers mobilized to welcome voters in some 7,000 polling stations, 150 of them abroad.

To participate, voters had to sign a declaration of support for the PD and pay two euros.

The Zingaretti election team said Sunday night that it was counting on the participation of more than 1.5 million voters.

(With information from AFP)