The day after the elections in Liguria which saw the centre-left defeated by a handful of votes, Giuseppe Conte goes straight to the M5s Constituent Assembly, which will end at the end of the month, for the re-foundation of the creature desired by Grillo and Casaleggio, and not pays too much attention to Grillo’s attacks or Renzi’s broadsides. But the M5s president is also focusing on the next regional rounds: Conte’s intention is to return to Emilia Romagna and go to Umbria, without prejudice to the work on the budget law being examined by Parliament, bringing together, as today on Tuesday 29 October, the M5s parliamentarians to develop a real ‘countermaneuver’ to oppose the “policy of cuts” that they have been denouncing for weeks.
So while the M5s Guarantor – who did not go to vote in this administrative session – does not stop attacking and on social profiles warns that “more people die betrayed by the sheep than torn to pieces by the wolf”, Conte, in the aftermath of the result of the Movement in Liguria which he defined as “disappointing”, responds to the reporters who stop him in front of Montecitorio by saying: “I always take responsibility, of course”.
To those who ask him if he fears that his leadership will be questioned, Conte says that “leaderships are always under discussion when there is no consensus, beyond the community’s deadlines. We are making a constituent assembly and as you know we discuss everything.” And again: to those who ask him if the Ligurian one is among the worst results in M5s history, the president of the Movement replies: “But what do you say? Unfortunately we are used to results that are not absolutely satisfactory and even very disappointing in the territories, we are aware of this. In fact this is why we are holding a constituent assembly and there is absolutely no underestimation of our ability, particularly in local elections, to have competitive lists and to be able to involve our potential electorate. As for Matteo Renzi, for the which with IV in coalition Orlando would have won Conte uses irony and replies: “Where did he say it from, from Riyadh?”.
The day also saw a long-distance back-and-forth between leading exponents of the ‘old guard’, Danilo Toninelli and Paola Taverna. “The M5S didn’t lose in Liguria, it didn’t even participate in the Ligurian elections. Under the symbol of the M5S, however, there was Giuseppe Conte’s party but without anything from the Movement. If the Movement had been there, the symbolic candidate of the Region would have been been proposed and voted by the Movement’s members it would have been a binding contract between all the allies of this so-called progressive camp. The candidates were all Giuseppe Conte’s, not the members’ network it has always happened historically in the M5s.
“Movementists, don’t despair because Conte’s party is dying out on its own. I don’t know what will become of the Movement. We don’t deserve such an inglorious end, come on!”, says the former Minister of Infrastructure, now in head of the M5s Board of Arbitrators. The reply from Taverna, deputy vice-president of the Movement, was immediate: “False. So, Danilo, I call you that because for ten years we have worked arm in arm and we both know the M5s: this was not Conte’s list, but that of the M5s And if today we have 4.5%, it probably also depends on an internal war that is hurting the Movement much more than what we should do together against the center-right, which was our only opponent in this competition in Liguria and in those that will follow. Everyone must have their place. And, by the way, there are many measures under the attention of the Board of Arbitrators that deserve more attention”, he notes, acknowledging the result “which did not satisfy us” and the necessity of the constituent assembly.
“When I listen to a representative of the M5S, today with a very important position, because Danilo Toninelli presides over the Board of Arbitrators, say that these are the president’s lists and that this is not the M5S, I am obliged to remember that there It is a Statute where it is clearly written that the lists are formed through the self-nominations of the members of the M5S. This is what happened in Liguria and there are now those in the running from Umbria and Italy. Emilia-Romagna I will tell you more: the lists – notes Taverna – were voted by the members”.