There is nothing consensual in this story, neither the hug nor the farewell, which as we will see is more intricate than it seems. At least according to the latest news about the evolution of the Third Pole life, short and restless as a dragonfly. Speaking at the Agorà Estate, yesterday the leader of Azione Carlo Calenda threw a kind of “de profundis” of the project on the table. “Until now – he said – we are two separate parties, we have separate choices, I have no desire to argue with Italia Viva: they will go their own way and then in the European elections they will compete for consensus like us”. Farewell, then, dreams of a unified path, with Emmanuel Macron as a guiding star and perhaps, one day, even a tutelary deity.
In autumn, the results looked magnificent in that Auditorium della Conciliazione, where even the president of Renew Europe, Stephane Sejourne, came down from Paris, and Rome seemed to be the pulsating center of that “Pde”, a European democratic party, which has to conquer its space politician as a liberal family in the upcoming elections. The arbitrators, obviously, were Matteo Renzi and Carlo Calenda, who gave the impression of walking, albeit not with much enthusiasm, towards the single list. If month after month the disintegration of the unitary party was clear, yesterday the separation of the groups seemed certain in will but problematic in practice.
“I cannot leave a group that has my name on the logo – said Calenda again in the Rai 3 lecture – they have to decide when to leave”. Where «they» represents the companions of this unhappy journey, the Renzians. In fact, they unofficially respond, with the formula of the sources: “Contrary to what was stated by Carlo Calenda, the group does not bear the name of Carlo Calenda. The group to which he belongs along with nine other senators is called “Azione – Italia Viva – Renovating Europe”». The «who leaves who» is, therefore, the telenovela of the twilight of a project, whose fusion difficulty was in the premises, also due to the personalities of the two founders, Carlo Calenda and Matteo Renzi, suited to individual leadership. This made living together quite difficult, to say the least. Which, over time, often caused the internal debate, certainly complex in a path that was intended to be federative, to spill over into personal attacks. Accomplices of a certain tendency of Renzi to go it alone, to “discard” companions with acceleration and some moralistic point of Calenda that emerged several times in his public history.
Proof of this came recently with the Twiga case, an establishment that Daniela Santanché co-owned for a few years, but which nonetheless remains a symbol of a certain “way of life” of which she is an image, a frontier territory. between politics and custom. Well, Corriere della Sera publishes the news that along with Daniela Santanché, in Twiga, a few weeks ago, among others, Maria Elena Boschi and Francesco Bonifazi, co-protagonists of the entire Renzian epic, were also present. Image that Carlo Calenda did not like. So much so that Action writes a note in which these dinners are defined as “inappropriate” and opens a breach with Italia Viva on the political implications of the judicial investigation that involved the Minister of Tourism. In fact, the Calendians are in favor of renunciation, the Renzians are not. However, Renzi responds by having transformed the offensive dinner into a sort of mini-motion by Congress: “Everyone is going to have dinner with whoever they want. Grabbing allies for dinner doesn’t seem farsighted or even liberal to me. I fight against sovereignists and populists, Calenda attacks me ».
However, the limit of the level of confrontation was reached in late spring. In one of the (many) moments of duel between the two forces, Francesco Bonifazi accuses Calenda of having missed the Senate too much. The leader of Action responds by emphasizing that when he was not at Palazzo Madama it was «to carry out initiatives in the area of Action or Italia Viva. I wasn’t in Miami with Trump’s son-in-law or in Arabia getting money from the Kashoggi killer.”
The reference is to Renzi’s activity as a lecturer in Saudi Arabia and his friendship with Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. An argument, incidentally, already used in the past by the former Minister of Economic Development, but at a time when he was not in a political condominium with the former Prime Minister. Who launched a good torpedo, accusing Carlo Calenda of attacking him “on a personal level, with the same criticisms that the grillini have been using for months, not from the liberal democrats”. And the director of Italia viva added: “If I am a monster today, I was also one six months ago when the Italia viva symbol was needed to present the lists”. And so the story goes precisely to those frenetic days of August, just a year ago, when Calenda starts with the idea of an autonomous race with Renzi, then looks towards the Pd area, where the Italian left and the greens were already resolved, then they retreat given the difficulty of living together in such a heterogeneous alliance. The rest is a path of continuous distinctions, proof of an almost scientific law: it is difficult to establish something solid by uniting two divisions. Both left the Democratic Party, now Renzi and Calenda find themselves in no man’s land.
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
