“I won a championship as top scorer, now I can also be on the bench as long as the team wins”. Words, those of Matteo Renziwhich arrive at a time when the leader of Italia Viva is preparing to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. He will do it tomorrow during an event in Florence, a lunch based on tomato soup, in which a new proposal for the alternative to the centre-right government will also be launched. “What is clear”, explains Renzi interviewed by AGI, “is that the center is decisive. Meloni also knows this, which is why he attacks me. To paraphrase De Gasperi, when the center looks to the left the numbers are no longer those that one imagines.”
The problem of friction, vetoes and suspicions within the center-left remains. Obstacles that can be overcome?
“If you want to win the elections with this electoral law, you have to be together. If there is proportional representation, a green light for everyone. But with the majority, you can only make two sides”.
A lesson that was understood in the opposing camp.
“Meloni is very lucky. She doesn’t have a majority of voters. She has thirty percent. Other leaders before her won with 40 percent. Meloni’s great strength is the weakness of others. In Italy Meloni wins because the center-left is divided. In Europe it is influential because France and Germany are in crisis.”
The fifty-year milestone is also a time for taking stock. Regrets? Good intentions?
“No regrets, yes mistakes. But those must be made. The list is anything but trivial in my case. I made risky choices when I was in government, but if I had been prudent I would never have arrived at Palazzo Chigi. In hindsight then, as they say, the pits are full. As for good intentions, I don’t know if mine are good or not, but I lived for six years with a judicial proceeding on my shoulders. For a thousand days of government years of investigations. For me now the time for zen is over, I want to go back to front line politics.”
A Zen phase also marked, as he often recalls, by the attacks of his political opponents. Were there any experiences from your youth that helped you deal with that moment?
“The boy scouts and the refereeing period were the two experiences that taught me the most. When I feel mocked and attacked, I turn to the memory of when I refereed in Garfagnana. It was then that I learned to make decisions without going back , not to take them back. From the scouts I learned the concept of the path to follow, of the path and of the climb. alternative is stay still.”