For the secretary of the Pd Pierluigi Bersani the fact that Nichi Vendola participates in the primaries of the centre-left is good news. Instead for UDC leader Pierferdinando Casini an alliance between Pd and SEL is "horrifying". Bersani's rejoinder: "While Casini was horrified with Berlusconi, the center-left was bringing Italy into the Euro." Implicit is the reference to the fact that in that phase the centre-left (strong of Prodi and Ciampi) also had the support of Bertinotti and the Communist Refoundation. The fact remains that Vendola's arrival in the Pd primaries makes convergence between the Pd and the Udc increasingly difficult (but it was already before, given that Casini is aiming for Monti-bis).
In short, up to now we are faced with widely foreseen difficulties. But there's more. Indeed, one wonders how the arrival of Vendola in the primary competition will impact the complex internal relations of the Democratic Party, which will hold a national assembly next Saturday to decide on the dates and modalities of the primaries. It is well known that there is a certain ferment in Bersani's party. The management group closest to the secretary (from D'Alema to the young Turks Fassina and Orfini) seems oriented towards a double-round voting, which should ultimately favor the candidacy of the secretary, which in the second round should gather more support than its main competitor, the mayor of Florence Matteo Renzi, recovering the votes of Sel and other candidates such as Puppato, and, why not, Tabacci. However, it will be interesting to see what Renzi's strategy will be after Vendola enters the field, that if he wants to win primaries and politics, he will have to go and get the votes from the left as well.
Voting rules will also be defined at the meeting on Saturday: who will be the voters (even sixteen-year-olds and foreigners as on previous occasions?), how those who will go to the polls will be registered, how to do to prevent the vote (within the centre-left) from being conditioned by possible infiltrators of other political forces (leading PDL). On these points it is easy to foresee a rough confrontation between the Berssanians and Renzians. And not just because in the Democratic Party not everything comes down to the opposition between the favored candidates. Many Veltronians are tempted to support the mayor of Florence, and some of them are already working in this direction. Then there is the group of Fioroni's ex ppi, opposed to the coalition primaries. Finally there are the Latvians, supporters of Bersani, but with an eye also to the hypothesis of Monti bis, as demonstrated by a recent meeting organized by about fifteen parliamentarians.
In short, the Democratic Party is facing a very delicate passage: Saturday's assembly will have to give the right direction to the primaries. To do this, he will also have to vote on a statutory amendment that allows (as Bersani wants) the candidacy of Renzi and the others given that the current statutory legislation provides that, in the event of a coalition primary, only the secretary will run for the party. This time then, given the different internal positions, it will have to be in a quorum. Which on previous occasions has always been achieved with difficulty.
