«The first bet is won. The primaries in Rome and Bologna are a popular success and even in the Covid era they have turnout as in the pre Covid era. The success of Lepore and Gualtieri shows that we were right not to be afraid and do them because the center-left people are with us. Forward”.
The breath of relief for the “dignified” turnout
The secretary of the Pd Enrico Letta, who has been such only since last March after the dramatic resignation of Nicola Zingaretti, with the gazebos dismantled can draw not one but two breaths of relief. In Rome and Bologna, the flop of participation that was registered just a week ago in Turin was avoided, where just over 11 thousand voters of the Democratic Party and the center-left participated in the primaries, less than the signatures collected by the various candidates: 45 thousand in the capital and 25 thousand in the red Bologna – even if one of the seven Roman candidates, Giovanni Caudo, stretches shadows on the celebration of the people disputing the official figure of the Nazarene (“the voters were no more than 35 thousand”) – are not exciting figures but testify to a certain vitality of the primary instrument 16 years after its great test, that of 2005 with over 4 million voters who flocked to crown Romano Prodi as prime minister of the then center-left.
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A referendum on candidates already chosen in Rome?
But the founder of the Olive Tree, who uttered the famous phrase “blood must flow in the primaries”, brings us back to the limit of these primaries in post-pandemic cities: far from being the tool to make the people of the Democratic Party and the little ones choose parties of the center left the best candidates appeared in most of the referendums on candidates already chosen by the “firm”. And Letta’s own words (“the success of Lepore and Gualtieri shows that they were right not to have been afraid …”) are there to testify that if the “people” had invested in alternative candidates it would have been a tragedy for executives. In Rome, Senator Monica Cirinnà, one of the few female candidates, was induced to give up so as not to jeopardize the success of the former Minister of the Economy already invested. On the other hand, in Bologna, the success of the young Renzian candidate and mayor of San Lazzaro Isabella Conti with her 43% is a wake-up call for the “company”: there is a good slice of traditional center-left voters who do not recognize themselves in the strategy of the alliance with the M5s and would like a renewal of the ruling class.
Letta and the obstacle course of the new center-left
In any case, the victory of Lepore, who in recent days received the endorsement from the outside of the same leader in pectore of the M5s Giuseppe Conte, confirms to Letta that the way to get to beat the center-right is the right one even if still in the beginning and fraught with obstacles. The pentastellati will therefore support Lepore already in the first round (otherwise they would have presented one of their candidates if he had won Conti) and in Naples there is already a common candidate in the person of former minister Gaetano Manfredi. While in Milan, and especially in Rome and Turin, Pd and M5s will go to the polls as enemies. The Roman challenge for Guatieri now appears particularly difficult: in addition to having to run against the outgoing mayor Virginia Raggi supported by the M5s, he will also have to contend with Carlo Calenda, former Pd and leader of Action who refused to run in the primary, with the risk that the center-left vote disperses by sending the outgoing mayor to the ballot against the center-right candidate Enrico Michetti.
Pd-M5s: variable geometry alliance
A new center-left being established (that of the alliance between Pd and M5s) which is therefore confirmed as difficult and with variable geometry and which, with the encouragement of Conte leader of the M5s 2.0 which should finally arrive in the coming days, will be very focused on the internal competition between the two former premier, Conte and Letta, to snatch pieces of the electorate from the ally-opponent. All this while on the right there is even talk of a single party on the French model.