The outcome of the center-right summit certainly does not come like a bolt from the blue. That Silvio Berlusconi was preparing the ground for a green light from the allies to his race at the Quirinale had been known for weeks.
My he center left perhaps did not expect, or at least that was the hope, that Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni agreed to write it in black and white in an official note, actually launching the candidacy, all the more after what had been read as ‘openings’ in recent days by the Northern League leader and, above all, after the repeated warnings on the net no to the name of the Knight launched both by the Pd that from the 5-star Movement.
Therefore, the hot reaction of Enrico Letta and Giuseppe Conte is of total closure: “No to divisive names”, reiterates the dem leader, while sources of the Nazarene let filter “disappointment and concern”.
The M5s leader is even more categorical: “It’s for us an inadmissible and unacceptable option. The center-right does not block Italy “, he says.
Along the same lines, Leu: “Berlusconi’s candidacy is frankly inadmissible and is the exact opposite of what it would take in this difficult and complex phase of national history”, argues the group leader Federico Fornaro, who then expresses the common thought of the allies: it is a “decision that complicates the path and represents a boulder deliberately placed by the center-right on the high road of a shared research of a President of the Republic”.
Nor is the comment of Carlo Calenda tender, who accuses the center-right and Berlusconi himself for “lack of sense of limit”. Then he warns: “Do you want to face a government crisis?”.
And while in the center-left, for the second consecutive day, the words of Gianni Letta do not escape, historical adviser to the Knight, who first in the funeral home and then on the occasion of David Sassoli’s funeral insists on the need for “the climate of serenity and evaluation of general interests, of the common good, first of all, to be the guide” , in the center-right, however, the blue leader is asked to definitively dissolve the reserve and, in particular, to give guarantees on the numbers.
Because it is true that the center-right has more chances, abacus in hand, but alone it does not reach 505, or the absolute majority required from the fourth ballot onwards, and it needs at least fifty additional votes, without considering the possible snipers.
And it is precisely on the ‘number factor’ that the dem secretary focuses: “None of us can afford all-encompassing choices, there is no one who can impose his idea on others”. To then reiterate the line: “The candidate must be unitary and not divisive. He must not be a political leader but an institutional figure”.
After all, for Letta “convergence is mandatory”. For Matteo Renzi that of Salvini and Meloni is only tactical: “We’ll see if next week they are serious or not,” he says even before the center-right summit begins.