Third polo game over – La Stampa

Rome. «The project of the single party is shipwrecked», Carlo Calenda raises his hands. The divorce is complete, the paths of Matteo Renzi and the leader of Action separate, with a rebound of responsibility. “Carlo was afraid of losing his leadership with an open congress,” is the accusation from the Italia Viva front. “Renzi wanted to keep his hands free and with a single party he could not have been a lobbyist”, is Calenda’s reply.

Remote exchanges. The two do not speak to each other, as we saw yesterday in the Senate for the vote on the Pnrr. The political knots – on money, on the dissolution of Iv, on the leadership – and the personal ones are too deep to be able to proceed. Accomplices weeks of vitriolic controversy and yesterday also Renzi’s jokes on Calenda published by the print (diplomatically denied by Italia Viva), the air in the third pole has become unbreathable. A serious break and “without the possibility of second thoughts”, says Calenda. Of which the Democratic Party will also pay the price politically, “because it will not be us who collect the rubble, but Meloni”, vents a manager much listened to by Schlein: worried like many among the dem, that “so we will be left alone with the 5 stars , without being able to consolidate a three-pronged bloc, with a third pole which in any case intercepted a moderate electorate». Now things get even more complicated in the oppositions already weakened by the lack of unity.

The leader of Action doesn’t care, as he believes that there is space in the center, equidistant between the two poles. He regrets having been “naive to believe that Renzi would have stepped back, given that he earns millions of euros traveling the world and working for Saudi Arabia and others. I thought he didn’t have time to do anything else and instead he also has time for the Reformist … ».

The rival brings his team together and unloads the responsibilities of having made a mistake, as there would have been great room for a united Third Pole at the European Championships. But Calenda tries to explain the split in a video to his voters as follows: «After the elections it was understood that Renzi did not want to be a single party. It was clear to me when he took five steps forward and not one back, taking Italia Viva back in hand. We have proposed a contestable party project and a strong cultural manifesto. Renzi did not want to dissolve Iv and give resources to the new party”.

Here is the non-secondary problem, the money, which according to the leader of Action his former ally needs to make the Leopolda and to get Italia Viva on the march. An issue, that of two per thousand, which goes hand in hand with the no to the early dissolution of the two parties. Proof of which was seen in the last act on Wednesday, when, faced with an exacerbated crisis, the Italia Viva delegation at the summit with Calenda reiterated that it did not want to sign any documents. Calenda takes note of it and announces that Action will proceed anyway to unite with the liberal and popular area. He maintains that the dispute is not personal even if he points out that he has “been covered in insults” and that by now “there is a problem of mutual trust to work on because we have common parliamentary groups”.

Here is the final point, no single party, but the groups of the third pole between IV and Action remain united in parliament. Renzi, however, explains it backwards. «All alibis», he says, because «Italia Viva is ready to dissolve, like Action, on October 30, after a free and democratic congress. In terms of resources, IV has so far transferred almost one and a half million euros to Carlo Calenda’s advertising team and is ready to contribute for half of the expenses necessary for the congressional phase and to transfer resources from the moment of the birth of the single party». Therefore, “it is a unilateral choice by Calenda, a sensational own goal”.

But the question is deeper. Perhaps Romano Prodi is right in saying that «there is no space to make a synthesis of the center in this moment in which people vote for centre-left or centre-right» and that in any case «Calenda and Renzi appear divided from the outside» in order to be able to something to be born. Or maybe behind these earthquakes at the center of the political scene, there is also the lack of an aggregating drive, due to the simple observation that with Schlein in the Democratic Party and with Meloni premier, the bipolarity has been revitalized. —

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