Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy (, DL), commonly known simply as The Daisy (La Margherita), was a centrist political party in Italy. The party was formed from the merger of three parties within the centre-left coalition: the Italian People's Party, The Democrats and Italian Renewal. The party president and leader was Francesco Rutelli, former mayor of Rome and prime ministerial candidate during the 2001 general election for The Olive Tree coalition, within which The Daisy electoral list won 14.5% of the national vote. The Daisy became a single party in February 2002. It was set up by former left-leaning Christian Democrats, centrists, social-liberals (former Liberals and former Republicans), as well as other left-wing politicians from the former Italian Socialist Party and Federation of the Greens. On 14 October 2007, DL merged with the Democrats of the Left to form the Democratic Party (PD). History The idea of uniting the centrist components of The Olive Tree, which were divided in many parties, was discussed at least from 1996. In the 1996 general election, there were actually two centrist lists within the Italian centre-left coalition: the Populars for Prodi, an electoral list including the Italian People's Party (PPI), Democratic Union (UD), the Italian Republican Party (PRI) and the South Tyrolean People's Party (SVP), and that of Italian Renewal (RI), including the Segni Pact (PS) and Italian Socialists (SI), which later merged into the Italian Democratic Socialists (SDI) in 1998. In 1998 splinters from the centre-right coalition formed the Democratic Union for the Republic (UDR), later transformed into Union of Democrats for Europe (UDEUR), to support the D'Alema I Cabinet. In 1999 splinters of PPI, UD and other groups formed The Democrats (Dem). Between 1998 and 2000, there were several precursors of such idea at the regional and local level in Northeast Italy, notably the Reformist Popular Centre in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the Daisy Civic List in Trentino, the Autonomist Federation in Aosta Valley and Together for Veneto in Veneto. Initially some of these experiments were intended to include both Christian-inspired parties and secular ones, such as SDI and PRI. However, on 12 October 2000, only PPI, Dem, UDEUR and RI agreed to join forces with a joint list called "The Daisy" for the 2001 general election. The Daisy, led by Francesco Rutelli (who was also candidate for Prime Minister for the whole centre-left), won 14.5% of the vote, only two points less