The great concern this week for the militants of the Democratic Party (PD) was to find tents resistant to the rain and wind that will hit almost all of Italy this Sunday. The bad weather is the latest difficulty for the main center-left political force in the country, which is holding its primary elections on a day when leaving home to go to one of the 5,500 ballot boxes installed in the streets can become an almost heroic gesture. thus hindering the goal of achieving at least one million votes. If the low participation is confirmed, it would be the further ratification of the difficult period that the Italian progressives are going through, humiliated by the right-wing Giorgia Meloni in the elections last September and in a comatose state since then.
The poor result in those elections led to the resignation of Enrico Letta as leader of the PD, opening a succession race that concludes this Sunday by Stefano Bonaccini and Elly Schlein. They were the first two classified in the vote held among the militants last week and will now be subject to the scrutiny of all Italians who are at least 16 years old and foreigners residing legally in the country. Citizens who wish to participate in the primaries must also pay two euros and declare that they are PD voters. Except for a last-minute surprise, the chosen one will be Bonaccini, regional president of Emilia-Romagna and with a reputation as a good manager in this rich territory.
Lesbian and ultrafeminist, Schlein, who was 18 points below Bonaccini in the vote of the militants on February 19, is seen as an option more to the left than her rival. That image, which can scare the most centrist voter, is precisely what Schlein tries to exploit to try to surprise and revitalize her party. Schlein and Bonaccini know each other well, since before being elected deputy in the last general elections, the candidate was regional vice president of Emilia-Romagna.
In the 15 years since its founding, the PD has devoured eight different leaders: less than two years on average they have lasted. It is not surprising, therefore, the joke that has been circulating in recent weeks in its headquarters in the face of the imminence of the primaries: “We chose the next former secretary general.” This is yet another confirmation of the few hopes that the left has of returning to power shortly, which is due to two reasons: the wear and tear of supporting all the technical governments of recent years and the strength of Meloni, confirmed in the recent victories of the right in the regional elections in Lombardy and Lazio. Even Letta and Bonaccini have recently had good words for the prime minister. While the outgoing leader of the PD celebrated that the head of government is proving to be “better than we expected”, the favorite to succeed her acknowledged that she was a “capable” politician and that “she is not fascist”, thus shelving the usual accusation made to Meloni.
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