who are the new olive growers, and what do they want – Corriere.it

Surprise: in new Pd that he was supposed to abolish the currents, check a new component.

Its exponents, led by Enrico Letta’s former right-hand man, Marco Meloniself-christened themselves new olive groves and made their debut on Saturday 25 March.

In reality, these are former Latvian parliamentarians, who decided on Saturday afternoon to desert the assembly convened by the president of the party Stefano Bonaccini
despite having supported his candidacy during the Pd primary campaign.

The reasons of this tear by the so-called neo olive trees they are not very clear. In an unofficial note released a few minutes before the meeting via zoom began, they declared that they did not want new divisions in the Democratic Party. But given that Bonaccini, in his speech at the meeting, never even said the same thing again, the exit of the former Latvians appears more than anything else as an attempt to new positioning within the party after Elly Schlein’s victory.

Setting up a new current one month after the congress means deal on your own with the new secretarywithout going through Bonaccini or the components that support the president Pd, such as the reformist base of Lorenzo Guerini or the Young Turks of Matthew Orfini.

Certain, the collapse of the Bonaccini motion on the one hand strengthens the power of the secretary, because those who wanted to go to the count in the parliamentary groups for the choice of new presidents now have their weapons blunt. Without the former Latvians, the Bonaccini area would never be able to impose its own candidate against the one chosen by Schlein. Not only that, he would lose that game badly. And one of the reasons why the minority seems to have buried the hatchet by giving a mandate to the president dem to continue negotiations with the leader.

But there is a flip side: Schleinwhich won because it was able to better represent renewal, now he has an extra current to deal with and reckon with. And this, in the long run, could be for the secretary not be an advantage. This is the opinion of the many who, in both motions, still hope for a Schlein-Bonaccini pact that will bypass the currents once and for all.