Of the three candidates for the secretariat who will compete in the primaries on Sunday 3 March almost everything is known about the PD except what matters most and that is: which one type of democratic party, if they win, they intend to promote.
They want an Olive format PD, sufficiently indistinct and ambiguous to be able to attract both the voters who are to their left and those who are to the right, as it would seem to want with its indistinct "large field" Nicola Zingaretti, or they want a PD that accentuates its democratic profile, reformist, pro-European and guaranteed in such a way as to exclude any possible alliance with the 5 Stars and with the League a priori, as it would seem to want Roberto Giachetti? These two hypotheses conflict and it would have been more correct if the members and voters had been placed clearly faced with this choice. But it didn't happen that way, and it's a shame.
A good test to know in which direction the PD intends to go is the attitude that the new secretary has will take on the proposal made by the former Minister of Economic Development Carlo Calenda. As is known, Calenda has proposed that the PD, in view of the European elections, promote a "national list" in which all those social, political and cultural forces that share the “We are Europeans” platform, a platform which was joined by Zingaretti, Martina and Giachetti and which has already collected around 200.000 signatures.
In it the contents are outlined with unequivocal clarity of the battle in which the Italian reformist and pro-European forces must engage: continue the effort to carry forward the reform process started by the Renzi and Gentiloni governments, countering the attempt against the reformer by the yellow-green government and, engage with great loyalty and determination in the effort to reform the European Union, not to weaken it, as Salvini and Di Maio would like, but to strengthen it. It is a platform that is anything but moderate. It is a pro-European, reformist and guarantor platform which also marks an insurmountable distinction against populists. If the PD chose to move in this direction, not alone but together with all the other pro-European and reformist forces, it would then be possible to set in motion a political and cultural process of unitary recomposition of this field until arriving (why not?) at the creation & of a new and broader democratic political formation.
Is it realistic to think so? I creed say yes, because the Italian political system is anything but static. From 1992 to today it is constantly evolving and transforming and is far from having found its place settling. Will also true, as they say, that it no longer makes much sense to talk about right and left, but it is equally true that the disappearance of the old political formations has not led and does not lead to the disappearance of the political cultures and of the various ideal orientations which instead survive and continue to manifest themselves, both even in new forms.
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There are, of course, conservatives, just as there are moderates, reformists, liberals, social democrats, antagonists and movementists and today also populists and sovereignists. These political and cultural trends continually resurface both albeit in a different way than in the past. Imagine therefore that the democratic, reformist and pro-European forces can converge and create a new formation it is not wishful thinking. Or, at least, not more than as much as believing in the possibility of recreating the forms of the past (the old great mass party, the company) or returning to the bipolarity of the years ninety, like that the one between Prodi's Olive Tree and Berlusconi's centre-right. It won't be like this.
Salvini does not think at all of returning to the old centre-right. Rather, he is thinking of a new aggregation with Fratelli D'Italia and with the 5 Stars like Di Maio. On the left there are those who imagine the creation of a new aggregation with the Democratic Party, Leu, the Italian Left and Fico's 5 stars, a sort of desired Italian-style Podemos not only from Travaglio, but also from Mieli and even Cacciari, who think so to stem Northern League sovereignty. But this too is an illusion. If indeed something like this really should happen then for the reformist and pro-European left would remain only one possible choice: that of place themselves, distinguishing themselves, in thearea between the antagonistic left and the sovereign right to try to unite all democratic and liberal forces in the challenge, which may not be the case distant, for the government of the country.
