DS, Gianni Vattimo, a left-wing philosopher, Maurizio Zipponi, a former trade unionist and deputy of the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), and Luigi de Magistris, a left-wing former prosecutor of Catanzaro who inquired Romano Prodi. Arlacchi, De Magistris and Vattimo were all elected to the European Parliament. From the results of the European election, IdV was the fourth largest party in the country. Following these results, Di Pietro said that IdV "will remove his name from the symbol of the party, in order to build something larger, more useful and that represents something more important". He also said that "we need to become a great progressive party that supports a proposal for a credible government". The party's executive decided not to remove the name of its founder, considering that name still too important for the party. Populist turn and discontents (2009–2013) Since de Magistris's strong showing in the 2009 European election there was talk of an underground row between him and Di Pietro for the leadership of the party. Moreover, as some members of the party were entailed with corruption charges, others like Francesco Barbato urged Di Pietro to be more earnest in cleaning up the party. De Magistris, keen on aligning the party with the far left and the most radical groups in opposition to Berlusconi, dubbed Di Pietro as too moderate and denounced that the party "risks of becoming the DC of the third millennium". While the party's grassroots supported a change of leadership and de Magistris initially did not rule this out, the party's old guard (Silvana Mura, Massimo Donadi, Felice Belisario, Luigi Li Gotti and Leoluca Orlando) staunchly defended the leader. Finally an agreement was reached between the two: during 5–7 February 2010 party congress de Magistris would support Di Pietro in exchange of a leading role in the party. In any event Di Pietro was re-elected as party president unopposed, while de Magistris did not become party secretary as he wanted. The populist course taken by the party, that enforced its co-operation with the far left, and the emergence of more "extreme" figures like de Magistris led Pino Pisicchio and his centrist faction to leave the party in order to join Francesco Rutelli's Alliance for Italy (ApI) in November 2009. While leaving the party along with other three MPs, Pisicchio told the press that lining up IdV in the "antagonist camp" was a departure from its