With the almost unanimous vote with which the National Assembly yesterday elected Enrico Letta to lead the party, the Democratic Party stemmed the shock opened by the resignation, traumatically given ten days ago, by Nicola Zingaretti.
It's a good news for the government chaired by Mario Draghi, whose difficult path would certainly not have been facilitated by the persistence of a crisis at the top of one of the relevant components of the majority that supports him.
Read, after all – 18-karat pro-European, a reformer by culture and character, a well-known and esteemed personality also on an international level – he is capable of making his party's contribution to the Executive more constructive.
The Pisan politician confirmed it with the intervention which he made before the vote of the Assembly: a substantial speech and not without harshness but, on the point, very clear. The Draghi government, he underlined, is not a "friendly" government but the government in whose program the Democratic Party recognizes itself and of which it wants to be "the engine".
It would have been incomprehensible, on the other hand, if it hadn't been like this.
Letta needs, just like Draghi, one stabilization of the political framework: without a medium-term horizon, at least two years, the Executive's reform program could not take shape (this was already noted by Financial Times at the end of February) and certainly no less time is needed to hope to get the Democratic Party out of the heavy situation in which it has found itself.
Only one passage in Letta's long exposition of his objectives – the one dedicated to jus alone, crucial topic but not among the most pressing of the moment – it was less harmonious; however, one can think that it was considered useful above all for internal use: that is, to draw attention to a great question of principle by its nature suitable for push the people of the Democratic Party to mobilize in this period more than ever disappointed and disoriented.
How to restore confidence and ideal momentum within a party whose leadership was left by Zingaretti – with an invective (“shame!”) that it will not be easy to forget – is in fact the most difficult challenge awaiting Letta.
The new secretary (eighth in a succession of leaders who have succeeded one another at the helm of a party that has not yet lived 14 years) has announced that he intends to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor. But one would think that he actually aspires, with a trait typical of his Christian Democrat roots, to a shrewd “renewal in continuity”.
Otherwise Letta's speech would enclose an insurmountable contradiction: between loyalty to a line and the severe evaluation of its results, given that he went so far as to say: "you don't need a new Secretary, you need a new Pd". A judgment on which, in truth, many - inside and outside the Democratic Party - agree.
Many choices of his most recent season - starting with a relationship with the 5 Stars that borders on subordination and a fall in attention towards "sensitive" issues, such as female participation - have, in fact, proved to be very negative. They have weakened consensus in public opinion, as various polls indicate; other signs of unease can also be seen in the distance that prominent figures such as the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, are taking from the party.
The goal that, not surprisingly, Letta indicates is therefore a more open and inclusive party, strongly aimed at enhancing women and young people; a party that knows how to dialogue not only with the 5 Stars but with other forces (Calenda, Bonino, Renzi, Leu, the Greens) to give life to a coalition that ultimately relive the Olive tree. With the unconcealed ambition of reserving leadership for the Democratic Party.
At the time of the Olive tree there were, however, the Oak and its "bushes": today that is no longer the case.
The balance of power within this hypothetical coalition would be very different and much more articulated and its management would inevitably be much more complex.
The current Democratic Party appears inadequate for such a task. Will the "shock therapy" enunciated by Letta work? The choices he will have to make in the short term, first of all the definition of the structure at the top, will give some answers. And it will be possible to understand if a real change has begun or if the infernal machine of currents, by now mere chains of power, has already started to wear out even the new Secretary.
