Bonaccini starts the discussion: without business there is no work

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«A large popular and non-populist party. May he recover the majority vocation, which is not self-sufficiency but means turning to the whole country without delegating leftist votes to the M5S and moderate ones to the Third Pole. Let’s go get back the votes we lost. We make alliances, of course, but from a position of strength and not of subordination”. It’s still. «Today I have never heard the word enterprise resonate. For me it is inconceivable for a progressive and reformist force, because without business there is no work”.

Stefano Bonaccini’s Democratic Party is still that of Walter Veltroni’s “majority vocation”, and the votes lost for him are not only those who went to the left but also and above all those who fled to the right, first towards the League and then Giorgia Meloni. They are “the self-employed and the VAT numbers that we have guiltily left to others”. And to those on the left who insist on the fight against precariousness and low wages, the governor of Emilia Romagna reminds that the main way to raise wages and produce stable work is to cut the tax wedge that weighs on work, making it too expensive for businesses . As for the hypothesis of changing the name by introducing the word “work” put forward by the left (Andrea Orlando, Giuseppe Provenzano and also the “movementist” candidate Elly Schlein), it is “an incomprehensible discussion”: “Only journalists ask me: no voters raises the issue of changing the name. It is surreal to discuss the name and not the contents».

The candidate in pole position for the secretariat of the Democratic Party speaks almost last at the Antoniano Auditorium in Rome, where the “constituent” National Assembly gives the green light to the rules and the “Manifesto for the new democratic party” by starting the actual congress with the confrontation between the candidates in view of the primaries of 26 February. And he already speaks as secretary, after having stopped the attempt to trash the founding Manifesto of 2008 to replace it with the new one: with a Byzantine compromise it was decided that the new document will complement the old one and will be completed and updated after the February 26 primaries. But that is enough for Article 1’s Bersanians led by former Health Minister Roberto Speranza, who support Schlein, to return to the Democratic Party after slamming the door in 2017 in controversy with the then leader Matteo Renzi. A return greeted coldly by Bonaccini (“thanks to Article 1 for being here, but if the constituent phase were limited to this, it would be a small thing: we need to recall the millions of people who have left”), who is already building bridges to prevent new fractures and new splits: Speranza is recognized for the work done in the government against Covid (“they can set up the commissions they want, but thanks Roberto for what you have done for this country”); to the other candidates (in addition to Schlein, Gianni Cuperlo and Paola De Micheli are in the running) the offer of a “deal” after the congress: «If I win, I will ask Elly, Gianni and Paola to give me a hand, if I lose, I will make myself available of who won”. Yes, because the parties that took place yesterday in a semi-deserted Auditorium (many delegates were connected remotely) are at least two. Schlein’s looks decidedly more to the left than Bonaccini’s and insists on the keywords environment, precariousness, civil rights, women. Schlein’s natural meeting ground is with the M5s, Bonaccini’s with the Third Pole.

Will the two parties be able to stay together? In the meantime, the outgoing secretary Enrico Letta has managed to keep the Democratic Party together until the congress, and that is no small thing. «Let’s go to the valley, talk to the people – is Letta’s appeal, which quotes the song of the Church of the Three Tents -. Today is the day of rediscovered pride, after months of suffering all sorts of things. They tried to replace us but couldn’t. Winter is over, today is spring.’ Outside, however, it’s 5 degrees.