Proposals and huffs of the liberal-reformists in the centre-left
What was said at the conference of the association Libertà Eguale. Paola Sacchi's note
Enrico Morando, former dem undersecretary, defines the ongoing debate for the Democratic Party congress as "unpromising" and cites Bettino Craxi's PSI on "Merits and needs" to give an example of how that modernizing intuition, which combined growth, merit with defense of the weaker sections, it was one of the driving ideas of the leadership, "of a party even small" but which put the "firepower of ideas" at the centre. Morando cites it as an example to recall the Pd to that majority vocation that it had given itself with its birth, a vocation which as such must express a driving leadership, on the scheme, in the opposing camp, of what Giorgia Meloni did, recalls , who with her FdI party "pulled the center-right" to electoral victory.
Morando is president of the "Libertà Eguale " association, located in the centre-left, made up of former "bestists" of the former PCI, from which he also comes as well as Claudio Petruccioli, the former deputy classroom secretary Erminio Quartiani and various others, those frowned upon in the PCI as "friends of Craxi" and liquidated in the substitute formations as "the right". The “improvement” leader Emanuele Macaluso was the historic exponent of the association.
Of the liberal-reformists of "Libertà Eguale", of which many exponents voted three yeses in the justice referendum of the Lega and Radicali, there are also Catholic personalities such as Giorgio Tonini and the constitutionalist, former deputy of the Democratic Party, Stefano Ceccanti. The former deputy, first ousted from the electoral lists in favor of the leader of the red-green left Nicola Fratoianni, then readmitted but not elected, recalls the need to be "reformists even when in opposition".
Ceccanti sees the presidential reform as a possible point of dialogue with the center-right majority on the premiership. The two days in Orvieto, visited each year by "Libertà Eguale", gave the image of a segment of the centre-left – even if represented by an association from which, Morando recalls, only a political-programmatic direction can come – which contrasts but he does not demonize his political opponent and reasons on ideas "in search of the centre-left", as the title of the conference states.
In the debate we think about the mistakes that led to the defeat. Morando criticizes the choice of the Democratic Party to have the "electoral agreement" prevail over the "programmatic" one. And he uses the word "growth", a term that does not exist in the congressional debate of the Democratic Party but in general on the left is replaced by that of "redistribution". Not insignificant difference. But for the reformists of "Equal Freedom" growth can only go together with "ecological transition and the fight against inequalities".
There is not much enthusiasm at the Orvieto conference, not even for the "Calendian-Renzian" proposal for a "single party" of the "liberals". For the congress of the Democratic Party, Ceccanti launches "the Labor manifesto", ie the model in which Tony Blair, as a guide, and the maximalists coexisted. But an example that Renzi and Calenda do not mention in their future single party, meanwhile, we had at home. "Merits and needs" of Craxi's Psi, quoted by Morando at the end of the works.
Read also: Who really wants the US-style Republican party in Italy?
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/convegno-liberta-eguale/ on Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:12:48 +0000.