In the case of Renzi and the Quirinale, will Rondolino elect the new President?

If a Martian descended to earth these days and arrived in Italy, he wouldn't understand what world he ended up in. He should dedicate days and days to understand the origin and reason for the violent judicial and media offensive that once again affects the former prime minister and leader of Italia Viva, Matteo Renzi.

It all stems from the long investigation by the Florence prosecutor's office on the financing of the Foundation Renziana Open, the one that will organize the new edition of the Leopolda at the weekend, but extends to the thousand aspects of Renzi's political and personal life, from his controversial though legitimate conferences abroad to the insane media projects suggested by some of his collaborators in the mood for jokes, but never taken into consideration and even less realized. The Florentine magistrates put together 92 pages to try to frame Renzi even if so far no criminal profiles can be glimpsed, but the apotheosis of the anti-Renzi campaign is reached when those pages end up in the hands of newspapers complacent and populist like Il Without Newspapers e The La Verità who have no scruples (it would be news to the contrary) to explore and spill even very private aspects of Senator Renzi's life, collected without any parliamentary authorization and in open contempt of the Constitution, such as those of his bank account or his emails.

One can conceive all possible evil of Renzi and fight him politically, it is part of the normal dialectic, but the ongoing campaign is not political: this is pure barbarism that aims to destroy the adversary without being too subtle and in contempt most absolute of democratic rules and the constitutional rights of everyone, including opponents.

A Martian would not understand the reason for this gruesome anti-Renzi campaign, but the reason is very simple and can be explained with the approaching election of the new President of the Republic at the beginning of the year. It is not the first time that the eve of such an important appointment for the country's democracy has been studded with low blows, maneuvers, intrigues and those with a few gray hairs perfectly remember clashes, betrayals and tripping between the leaders of the DC from the 50s in Then. At first glance, the harshness of the anti-Renzi campaign, accompanied by the embarrassing silence of the guarantors on alternate days of the right and the left, would even seem disproportionate if we consider that Renzi's political star is clearly waning after the defeat of the 2016 referendum and that his party Italy Viva, struggles to garner 2% of the vote and doesn't seem to have a bright future ahead of it. But his opponents know that Renzi is a tough nut to crack and do not forget and do not forgive that the election of Sergio Mattarella to the Quirinale in 2015 in a few words was mainly thanks to him, in spite of the inconclusiveness of his predecessor at the secretariat of the Democratic Party, Pierluigi Bersani who in the quirinal battle of 2013 managed to burn two gentlemen like Romano Prodi and Franco Marini. And even less do they forgive Renzi for his solitary success at the beginning of the year which led to the defenestration of Giuseppe Conte and the opening of the road to Palazzo Chigi to Mario Draghi.

In a quirinal election in which neither the center-right nor the center-left have the numbers to elect the new Head of State on their own, it is perfectly understandable that Renzi's cunning and tactical ruthlessness alarm his opponents who would never bear that once again the 'former premier became, with the fifty MPs of Italia Viva, the'tip the scales. Scrapping Renzi in advance and splitting Italia Viva thus becomes the categorical imperative of the opponents of the Florentine senator. But in addition to respecting democratic and constitutional rules, which are too often trampled on, the Pasdaran in the fight against Renzi should perhaps take into account the sense of ridicule.

There is an episode among the many unleashed by the judicial-media offensive against Renzi that to define as grotesque is an understatement and it is the one that refers to a delusional anti-M5S plan elaborated by the fertile mind of an unreliable joker like Fabrizio Rondolino (who became Renzi's ultra after being Massimo D'Alema's spokesman at Palazzo Chigi) who suggested to the Florentine leader to do what the League and the Five Stars have been doing for a long time and that is to organize a preventive smearing of his opponents through a sort of mud machine. A reissue of the Spectre? Perhaps more simply a delusion that Renzi obviously took good care not to make his own.

But then where is the grotesque? In the fact that the current detractors of Renzi do not care about the rejection of the Rondolino plan by the former prime minister, but cause a scandal as if that phantom plan had become reality. Stupidity, bad faith, contempt for the sense of the ridiculous? Do you, but perhaps not even Rondolino would have ever imagined that his plan, while rightfully ending up in a drawer, would become fuel for the next election of the President of the Republic. But at worst, as we know, there is never an end, especially when political hatred clouds reality.