The Democratic Party (PD) of Italy is holding primary elections this Sunday, open to all citizens, to proclaim the Secretary for Reconstruction. Once again. The formation is desperate for the key to solving a leadership issue that has been deadlocked since Matteo Renzi first left his general secretary in 2017. The former prime minister ruled, resigned, ran again and ended the disorientation of the electorate and his own party before founding his personal voting machine (Italia Viva). Since then everything has happened. And almost nothing good. Even the return of Enrico Letta, former minister and outgoing secretary who failed in the last elections (September 2022) where nobody knew how to forge a fundamental alliance with the 5 Star Movement (M5S). This Sunday’s primaries are the latest call for a move the Italian left – or what remains of it in the PD – has slipped through many times before.
The militancy, which has passed nine different leaders in 16 years, now debated between four candidates. But only two with antagonistic profiles have managed to overcome the cut in guarantees to aspire to become the new secretary. The favorite is the governor of the Emilia Romagna region, Stefano Bonaccini (56 years old), with 52.87% internal support. His victory three years ago over then-powerful candidate Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League, was the final moment of glory for the Democratic Party. In fact, it remains one of only four regions in Italy ruled by the PD (out of 20 in total). In perspective, this milestone is a kind of election talisman that some are now trying to use. Coincidentally, National Assemblyman Elly Schlein, who was her vice president in that region as an independent for two years and until last October, is the other big candidate in these primaries (34.8% support). The two made a good team for a while in Emilia Romagna, but their distant ideological leanings and, more importantly, their special interests eventually separated them.
The polls are mostly on him. A recent poll by Nando Pagnoncelli, head of the polling apparatus Corriere della Sera, found that 25% of citizens would prefer Bonaccini, while only 12% would prefer Schlein. The problem for the party is that 22% believe ‘it would be better if any other candidate were presented’ and 35% didn’t even have an opinion. A symptom, on the other hand, of the fear of abstention contained in these primaries in the PD. 5,500 polling stations will be set up in squares and in party headquarters. And the goal would be for at least one million people to vote (in the last primaries Renzi won, it was two million). But the left’s general apathy and comatose state do not invite optimism.
The notion widespread these weeks is that Schlein is too left-wing to win with an agenda centered on social rights, gender equality or climate change, and that PD voters — including all Italians who want to take part in the vote – will prefer a more conservative option like Bonaccini’s. Or at least more focused. The governor of Emilia Romagna should have more capacity to build bridges to the party’s liberal satellites such as Matteo Renzi or Carlo Calenda. And it’s an easier figure to complement with the 5-Star Movement in the mandatory alliance either party must form if they are to oppose the right-wing coalition led by Giorgia Meloni that now governs Italy.
The PD, founded in 2007, has never won a federal election. But it has demonstrated its superior ability to make deals and forge alliances to gain power. And Bonaccini undoubtedly fits better into this tradition. But his profile invites a certain boredom. “He’s as boring as a funeral director,” lamented photographer and cultural agitator Oliviero Toscani.
The last elections last September showed that the PD cannot govern unless it relies on a grand coalition similar to that of the right. Enrico Letta and Giuseppe Conte, leader of the M5S, were unable to reach an agreement – in fact it was the Social Democrat who decided to sever ties – that would allow them to take advantage of the electoral law in force. Unless that norm is changed and Meloni has fully consolidated her hegemony on the right, it will be difficult to think of changing the current dynamic without creating a large opposition group.
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Considered by many to be the Italian Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elly Schlein has a more radical profile than Bonaccini. Woman, bisexual – as she explained herself – feminist, anti-liberal and communicative. She’s also fast and knows how to navigate the mud of populism. She was born in Lugano (Switzerland) in 1985. She has Jewish roots, is the daughter of university professors, an Italian mother and an American father. At 18 she moved to Bologna to study law and became the ‘adoptive daughter’ of the Emilia Romagna region. She volunteered in both of Barack Obama’s election campaigns, and when she returned in 2012, she took part in the 2013 campaign Italia Bene Comune, a progressive coalition founded by Pier Luigi Bersani of the Democratic Party (PD), which did not do so He got enough votes to rule.
Shortly thereafter, Schlein promoted a movement she dubbed Occupy PD to try to avoid the government that the party she now wants to lead wanted to form with Silvio Berlusconi in 2013. That was before she was elected MEP — by 54,000 votes — for a left-list, quitting the PD and later co-founding Possibile, a party featuring former PD leaders that wanted to be a sort of Italian-style Podemos which he eventually resigned. Ten years later he returned home. She has regained her membership card with the PD and intends to change the system from within. But the system has also changed a lot since they left and the Social Democrats, who have lost their hegemony, are fighting step by step with the M5S for the title of the first party in the progressive spectrum.
Many believe the problem with the young activist is that she can turn a party called to unite establishment forces into too marginal an artifact. The upside, many others consider, is that unless the course is radically changed, it will be difficult to be more restrictive on the voting spectrum.
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