Conte’s brothers. The premier crowns him “only rival”, looks for him for Rai but fears him on foreign policy

They are like in tango l’hombre y mujer. Giuseppe Conte, who leads the dance of the opposition, says that the premier “is inconsistent but not inadequate”. Meloni, who is the mujer, instead thinks that Conte “is our real opponent, the only one who can overshadow the government”. Meloni and Conte were married “premier and rival” until “Pd separates”. They exchange messages on the phone, always of institutional courtesy, and like the tangueros they glance at TikTok where they measure the popularity that is their drink, their mate. The premier’s social media managers are in fact alarmed. During Meloni’s last press conference in Brussels, social comments multiplied and the common request was not to send further weapons to Ukraine. It is Conte’s position who for Meloni is no longer “the irresponsible madman”, the former premier of the “liberticidal drift”, but the half-brother of Italy, the necessary opposite because “he is today what I was yesterday” .

Two like in dance, tennis, fencing, boxing. Every powerful needs an antagonist. Meloni chose Conte. The premier is in fact binary. You have two deputy prime ministers, two undersecretaries to the presidency and during the electoral campaign you sought, and accepted, a duel with Letta. You are of the opinion that in politics you need two big opposing blocs. With the leadership of the secretary of the Democratic Party lacking, Conte represents for Meloni, and he confided it, “the reference of the left area and will only attract further consensus. The Democratic Party will need time to regenerate”. Sending more weapons to Ukraine is a sensitive issue that separates and brings them together. Every time he talks about it, Meloni reiterates that Italy stands by President Zelensky but adds “none of us are pleased that this war continues”. Conte has already anticipated to his parliamentarians that in the coming months “it must be explained that the M5s is not for an abstract peace. Every time you intervene it must be clear that there is an attacked and an attacker. It is a necessary premise”.

Relations between Conte and Meloni are direct, there is no intermediary. And in fact they chase each other just like in the milongas, the tango ballrooms. In Naples, which is our Buenos Aires, every time Conte visits he puts the (white) rose in his mouth, which is that of peace, and as in Ken Loach’s films he invokes the bread of the basic income that Meloni will take away . In Brussels, Meloni recalls instead that only she did not casque Europe, the first to make immigration a major international issue except to be taken up by the unreachable David Carretta: “President already years ago, I read you the conclusions of the Council European Union of 2018, it is established that immigration is a challenge for all of Europe”. In 2018 Conte was the president and it is said that today he offers Meloni unsolicited lessons in diplomacy: “With Merkel I won not because I screamed but because I spoke to them”. It’s like puzzles. There are similarities and differences between M5s and FdI.

The distrust with the press is the same, the justicialism is the same (on the 41-bis FdI and M5s they are aligned) the same is their reference newspaper. The appointment of Giuseppe Valentino, the member chosen by FdI for the CSM, was blown up by an old article from the daily Fatto. The FdI senators justified themselves with “we cannot let the Fact attack us”. On the Donzelli-Delmastro case, the line to take was that of the Fact. Many FdI deputies repeated entire passages of articles from Il Fatto hostile to the Democratic Party like tapes. The same is their proximity to the judiciary. FdI envies the magistrates that Conte managed to nominate. M5s has excellent relations with FdI MPs Alberto Balboni, Ciro Maschio, Tommaso Foti. A regional FdI coordinator, that of Friuli Venezia Giulia, is the former M5s, Walter Rizzetto, another name of weight is Salvatore Caiata, also a former 5s. In the next few weeks Meloni will need Conte. In fact, she needs the vote of Alessandro Di Majo (M5s member) on the Rai board of directors to distrust CEO Carlo Fuortes, and Conte has always thought that Rai should be reformed because “it is our battle” so much so as to declare, after Sanremo, that ” a reflection is needed on Rai “.

Meloni can favor the assignment of the presidency of the Rai Supervisory Commission for the 5s Riccardo Ricciardi or Alessandra Todde (but it could be Conte’s surprise and candidate for the regional ones in Sardinia). Conte, in turn, could not get in the way and carefully study the semi-presidential proposal given that he was the “first to think about constructive mistrust and stable governments”. Before the elections, unlike the Democratic Party, Conte did not raise the ghost of the new fascism, on the contrary he said: “Meloni is entitled to govern, but she must know how to do it”. He didn’t yell at the “machete” despite the fact that the M5s has, and really, lost Marcello Minenna, director of Customs, a figure very close to Conte. Soon the president of INPS, Pasquale Tridico, will also lose, but Conte will take charge of it and nominate him in the next European elections as the leaders in the south.

Grappling with a colorless Pd, Meloni is not worried even by a victory in the primaries of Bonaccini (the challenger he considers to be of greater depth) but by the half-brother of Italy. Ukraine, Superbonus, excise duties … Conte is the gaucho, the shoulder to bite, as in dance, but also to hold tight. For Meloni it is the bifurcation, nothing but the path which for Borges contained together “the divergent, the convergent and the parallel”.

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• Carmelo Caruso

• Carmelo Caruso, journalist in Palermo, Milan, Rome. He started at La Repubblica. Today he works at the Foglio