Calenda also veers to the right, field tests-Meloni. From the premiership to justice –

Pietro De Leo

March 19, 2024

The missing tile joined yesterday. In the morning, Azione announced its adhesion, in Basilicata, to the project of the outgoing President Vito Bardi. Therefore, after Italia Viva, Carlo Calenda’s party also expands the center-right field. This is a step that was already floating around in the rumors on Friday, then the acceleration occurred with the exclusion of Action from the centre-left tables over the weekend. «After months of attempts to build a reformist alliance in a region where our party has achieved centrality by taking 12.2% in the general elections, we had to take note of the desire of the Pd and M5S to keep Action out of the coalition». Marcello Pittella and Donato Pessolano, the Lucanian pillars of Calenda’s party, write in a note. The latter chooses the scoutist greeting for the centre-left: «I wish you a good path under the guidance of the “great point of reference of the progressives”, Giuseppe Conte».

In the centre-right, Minister Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, coordinator in Basilicata of Forza Italia (same party as Bardi), hails the expansion of the coalition as “the fruit of exemplary work on the territory and at national level under the leadership of Antonio Tajani”. From the League, the secretary Matteo Salvini quips: «For Calenda, the problem of the world is me: if in Basilicata I am less problematic than in the rest of the world and he chooses to come on our candidates, on our programs, on our themes and on our battles, I am a sincere democrat, it means that he has made his assessments and that the League and the centre-right are the solution for Basilicata and for Italy”. Now the puzzle has come together. And it turns the spotlight on the next important step, Piedmont. Here, Iv and Azione look to Alberto Cirio, another president of Forza Italia, outgoing and re-nominated, who can envisage an extension also to those who were the founders of the Third Pole. At a local level, agreement is easier, as long as it occurs around candidates who are not ideologically connoted. The administrative program, in fact, can ignore many cultural legacies and the comparison between leaderships which, on a national level, amplify the difficulties in finding synthesis.

In a sort of school hypothesis, however, it is possible to draw up a series of elements on which common points could be found, placing them alongside those that could indicate an incompatibility. The first basin certainly includes fiscal policies (where a basic commonality between the Third Pole and the centre-right is imaginable), justice (starting from the separation of careers, Forza Italia’s great battle), and the change in the form of government (premiere). What, however, could be difficult to reconcile is the policy of combating immigration. And then there are the relationships between the individual parties, which are not always easy. Renzi’s desire to steal votes from Forza Italia, using harsh words towards Antonio Tajani and the ruling class on a communication level, does not create the best conditions for collaboration. Just as, often, certain Calenda releases have targeted Matteo Salvini. Without forgetting the conflicts between the founders of the Third Pole themselves. A series of factors certify that this collaboration, for the moment, is confined to the territory.