The paradox of primaries: from revolutionary to scam | Libero Quotidiano.it

Behind the debate on the primaries that stirred the center-left – or rather: the PD in this scorching August, there is a paradox. Primaries are a tool that the center-left brought to Italy back in 2005, copying it from the American Democrats. The idea came from Professor Arturo Parisi, a political scientist, then the right-hand man of Romano Prodi, and it was born in the context of a center-left world that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the entry into politics of Silvio Berlusconi, and the defeat of the joyful Occhetto machine, felt the need for a fresh start. The gaze turned to the American Democrats, interpreters of a liberal, modern, progressive left. The dream was that a Democratic Party, like the American one, would be born in Italy. But the road to unite different cultures, post-communists and post-DC, was long. So they started by importing a method. Revolutionary for the politics of the time: the primaries. It was October 16, 2005, and the Union, a coalition created after the failure of the Olive Tree, organized the primaries for the first time in Italy. Four million people lined up at the polling stations and chose Romano Prodi. The result was expected; he was the predestined candidate. But the choice was revolutionary.

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In the following twenty years, the PD – which was born in 2007 precisely with primaries, this time within the party – made this method not only its DNA but also the difference from the center-right. It has been used on a national scale 7 times, marking a distinctive trait: “You have a boss, we have a democratically elected leader.” The primary method is the fact on which the left has exercised the strongest cultural hegemony since the 2000s. Perhaps the only one. It has been copied abroad (in France it is being discussed these days) and at times even the center-right has tried to follow suit (from the Lega’s polling stations to the stalls). The paradox is therefore striking: what we have witnessed in recent days is PD leaders (Goffredo Bettini, Stefano Bonaccini, Roberto Speranza) and progressive intellectuals (Francesco Piccolo, Michele Serra, Corrado Augias) calling not to hold them, to shelve them. Too divisive, conflictual, a boomerang. While defending them, paradoxically, are the leaders of the M5S, a movement that has always avoided them, preferring methods (online consultations) that the PD has always looked down on, considering them a mockery compared to primaries, due to the much smaller number of people involved. Third paradox: what is proposed, among those opposed to primaries, as an alternative method? That of the opponent, the center-right, accused for twenty years of cultivating the cult of the leader, of despising democratic choices. Namely: whoever gets the most votes goes to Palazzo Chigi. Alternatively, an agreement between party secretaries, in the style of the First Republic, is proposed. In short, from hegemony to cultural subjugation.

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Yesterday confirmed this curious role reversal. If Stefano Patuanelli, M5S group leader in the Senate, defends the primaries, calling them a “moment of great participation and democracy” that “could bring our people closer to the polls” and therefore “are objectively the only choice,” Eugenio Giani, president of Tuscany, suggests holding them “only if we are forced by the electoral law to put the name of the premier candidate on the ballots.” And he makes it clear that he is “not a fan of primaries.” “Surreal debate,” defined it the secretary of Left Italy Nicola Fratoianni, reiterating his opposition to primaries. And against the polling stations rose the left-wing intellectuals: after Francesco Piccolo, who called them “a scam” in Repubblica, it was Michele Serra’s turn, who branded them as “fratricidal,” begging not to hold them (“I want to vote only once”). Yesterday, finally, Corrado Augias took up the great objection: “Is there anyone who really believes it’s possible that the losing side in the choice of its candidate would vote in the real elections for the winning candidate of the other side?” Thus denouncing the absence of cohesion among the voters of the broad camp (but then the problem is not the primaries). In all this, there is a detail ignored by leaders and intellectuals: Elly Schlein, who without primaries would not have become PD secretary, wants to hold them. And, according to the PD statute, she has the right to participate as a premier candidate.

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