Money, timing, leadership: Calenda and Renzi one step away from divorce

The thrust of the Renzians: 1.2 million for the face of Calenda

On the financial issue, the answer came from Renzi’s loyalist Francesco Bonifazi: «It should be remembered that Italia Viva contributed equally to Action to all the electoral campaigns of the Third Pole. The choice of how to allocate the money was taken by Senator Calenda who opted in the vast majority of cases for billboards bearing his face and his name. Italia Viva has currently contributed over one million and 200 thousand euros. As for the future 2 per thousand, it will obviously go to the structure legitimized by the Democratic Congress”.

Suspicions about the decision to centralize all Iv’s powers

The point is that the word “future” seems to refer to a distant time. In short, Calenda’s fear is that Renzi, now that he has embarked on the adventure of the Reformist to go “beyond the Third Pole”, brakes on the common project and awaits the development of events – starting with the fate of Forza Italia after Berlusconi – with newspaper in hand and Italia viva still standing. Calenda and his followers were also suspicious of the decision made by Renzi last December to centralize all the proxies of Italia Viva on himself as president of the party: why such a choice if we are moving towards the construction of a common house after dissolution ? Furthermore, from Calenda’s point of view, this centralization of powers over Renzi also makes it difficult to work in the common committees which must draft the new party’s manifesto of values ​​and establish its statutory rules, since Renzi’s representatives no longer have entitled to make decisions (Ettore Rosato, for example, is no longer the national coordinator).

The request for a contestable congress: the name of Marattin

Yet the force of things seems to lead the two towards a form of armistice already in the next few hours: the request to move forward in the single-party project also arrived yesterday evening from the assembly of Renzian parliamentarians. But for the Renzians, a real congress will have to be held, not a plebiscite in favor of Calenda: «We have agreed that in the autumn the single party will be born with a contestable congress – says Marattin -. The rest are technical, bureaucratic matters».

Divorce is not worth it: 50,000 euros at stake for each elected person

The reality is that divorce does not suit anyone: a return to two parties would cause the Third Pole to lose the numbers for the single groups in Parliament, thus also losing the public funding reserved for groups: around 50,000 euros per MP per year (9 in the Senate and 21 in the House). The power of things, the power of money. And that’s not all: the real weak point of the Third Pole’s constituting single party seems to be the cohabitation between two leaders of the strong personality, since on the political line and on policies there is complete agreement.

The warning from the MEPs: incomprehensible rupture

And it is from Europe that the warning comes: «It would be really difficult to explain today’s controversial misunderstandings to those in Europe who look with hope to the single party of the Third Pole as a point of reference for Renew Europe. We had a first important result in the policies, we are moving forward, without hesitation», says the Renzian MEP Nicola Danti. Meanwhile, the radical “cousins” of Più Europa, which in Strasbourg refer to the same liberal democratic group created by the French president Emmanuel Macron, are watching: the union of forces for the European elections of 2024 is planned. Or was there?