What majority will elect the new Head of State? A majority of broad agreements centered on the convergence between the Pd and the Pdl with the contribution of Civic Choice or a majority shifted to the left and composed of the Pd and Beppe Grillo's M5S? The gist of the dispute, which will go on stage from Thursday with the first votes of the Chambers gathered for the choice of Giorgio Napolitano's successor and which will have undoubted effects also on the formation of the future government, is all here, even if the outcome will be conditioned by a thousand unknowns and a thousand unforeseen events. The game scheme, however, is clear even if it is bivalent and the list of candidates is starting to thin out.
If the scheme of broad agreements and the shared candidate were to actually prevail – as Silvio Berlusconi asked again yesterday and as Pierluigi Bersani also promises as long as the choice of the new President of the Republic does not lead to the highly governed Pd-Pdl – in pole position there are essentially three candidates: Massimo D'Alema, Giuliano Amato and Franco Marini. Naturally, for each of them there are pros and cons and it cannot be completely excluded that the hypothesis represented by Luciano Violante should also be added to these three authoritative candidates.
One fact unites them: all four candidates can be supported, with more or less stomach aches, by the Pd and also by the Pdl, but the chances are not the same for each of them. On the eve who seems to have the most, at least on paper, is Massimo D'Alema who in recent days has done a valuable job of reconciliation within the Democratic Party and has even recovered a good relationship with Matteo Renzi, who had previously scrapped it . Furthermore, D'Alema is one of the candidates of the Democratic Party who is also liked by the Cavaliere because he offers guarantees of balance and has not hidden his sympathies for a line of political continuity with Napolitano which could lead to the birth of a government of broad understandings - with a government of purpose or a government of the President supported more or less directly by the Pd and Pdl – even if not to the very government with the direct presence of center-right and center-left ministers. D'Alema also has a dense network of international relations on his side that mostly help him: does he also have some handicaps? Certainly yes and paradoxically he has them in his own party and above all in the mind of Bersani who has not yet lost hope of reaching the "government of change" without the votes of the PDL and of going quickly to the elections: in this sense Bersani would like to elect a President who sends him to Parliament even with a minority government and who then quickly dissolves the Chambers. The latter hypothesis does not meet the favor of D'Alema and a growing part of the Democratic Party who fear a shipwreck of the Democratic Party in the next elections.
As an alternative to D'Alema but within the same scheme of broad understandings there are then the candidacies of Giuliano Amato, who has all the requisites to aspire to the Presidency of the Republic both for cursus honorum and for institutional and international prestige but who gathers cold consensus within the Democratic Party and the open hostility of the League for its socialist past, and that of Franco Marini who - unlike D'Alema and Amato - does not have an international standing and is older but is openly supported by the Catholic wing of the Democratic Party and by the former Margherita even if not by Renzi.
In the alternative there is Luciano Violante, who is well regarded in his party but also by the centre-right for having shown balance when he was president of the Chamber and who, in Berlusconi's back thoughts, could - as a former magistrate - also represent a bulwark against the prominence of the judiciary. Politically Violante is a bit of a faded copy of D'Alema with respect to which he cannot boast the wide range of international relations, but the games are open. So open that it cannot be excluded that, after the first votes and if an agreement is not immediately found on a candidate shared by Pd, Pdl and Civic Choice, Bersani - pressed by the so-called "Young Turks" and by Sel - chose the path of isolation on the left, break with Berlusconi and with a part of his own party and open the doors to Grillo in the illusory hope of being reciprocated when the government is formed. In this case, the strongest candidate would be that of Romano Prodi, who is seen as the smoke and mirrors by Berlusconi but who can gather support in the Democratic Party as the noble father of the Olive Tree but also in the M5S for his twenty-year relationship with Beppe Grillo .
If Prodi – who enjoys a first-rate international standing – were to take the Quirinale – the hypothesis of a government based on broad understanding between the Pd and Pdl would go further away and the return to the polls would advance by leaps and bounds to Bersani's satisfaction but perhaps at the price of a sensational break in the Democratic Party. The match is waiting to be seen and the kick-off is near.
