Edoardo Perna

Edoardo Romano Perna (Rome, 29 December 1918 – Rome, 5 October 1988) was an Italian lawyer, partisan and politician. He was a Senator of the Republic for 6 legislatures and group leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in the Senate from 15 February 1973 to 11 July 1983. He was also president of the Province of Rome from 27 November 1954 to 28 June 1956.

Biography Permanent was active in the Roman student anti-fascist movement while he was in high school. In 1942 he joined the Italian Socialist Party and then in 1943, he joined the Communist Party. During three legislatures, from 15 February 1973 to 11 July 1983, he served as leader of the PCI group in the Senate, taking the place that, for over twenty-five years, had been held by Umberto Terracini before handing it over to Gerardo Chiaromonte. in the 1960s he was politically close to Giorgio Amendola and his revisionists. In the 1980s he was politically close to Giorgio Napolitano, along with Gerardo Chiaromonte, Gian Carlo Pajetta and Emanuele Macaluso. One of the leading right wingers on the Executive Committee, Perna argued that the party lacked both a general project of social change and a credible system of political alliances. Together with Napolitano, he urged the party to behave more like a 'party of government' and not just as a 'party of opposition'.

He died in Rome on the morning of 5 October 1988 in a Roman clinic. The news of his death, according to his own wishes, was made public only on 8 October, after his funeral had been held in Teolo in the province of Padua.