Join forces with Renzi? Onorato says ‘no’, Spadafora says ‘yes’, Magi and Ruffini express their disappointment

Rome. An ambitious plan: Alessandro Onorato, leader of Progetto Civico Italia, does not wish to form an alliance with Matteo Renzi and aims to exceed the 3 per cent threshold on his own by collecting signatures. It is a wide-ranging programme, not without its risks, in that centre of the centre-left which has been struck down on the path to a broad coalition by the ‘best loser’ rule – an amendment tabled by Forza Italia MP Paolo Emilio Russo which, Russo says, aims to ‘discourage fragmentation and the influence of small political groups’. And it would now take a reimagined Charles Dickens novel to recount the dashed high hopes of those in the civic-reformist-moderate centre of the centre-left who, overnight (yesterday), found themselves facing not the hackneyed problem of who should lead the coalition, but the immediate dilemma of having to join forces – either with Matteo Renzi or without him – but all together, otherwise, given the amendment, they face not only the irrelevance of parties polling below 3 per cent – with the exception of the ‘best loser’ – but also a sort of drain on the coalition (the uncounted votes of the ‘worst losers’). In short: Renzi’s IV-Casa Riformista finds itself, in fact and in law, in a position of advantage. Meanwhile, the dream of Democratic Party guru Goffredo Bettini – built around that “Civic Project” which does not displease M5S leader Giuseppe Conte – and the paths of the other parties in this sphere are effectively at risk of being sidelined: Riccardo Magi’s “Più Europa”, Ernesto Maria Ruffini’s “Più Uno”, and former minister Vincenzo Spadafora’s “Primavera”. And on the evening when Renzi, at Villa Borghese, is celebrating the summer with his Casa Riformista, and Ruffini is debating fear and security with Prefect Franco Gabrielli at Palazzo Merulana, Onorato points to “the latest political manoeuvring” which “does not alter our grassroots approach”. “We’ll continue to be out on the streets,” he tells *Il Foglio*, “that’s where we come from and that’s where we’ll go to collect signatures from the people we represent. As local councillors, we’re used to being amongst the people and being elected by them. We want to represent a new civic ruling class that exists but is, to our shame, left to fend for itself in the regions, outside Parliament. Mayors, councillors and centre-left local representatives who do not identify with the current parties and who, generously, have come together to strengthen our coalition.” Riccardo Magi is bitterly perplexed: the amendment, he says, “is quite unbelievable; its origins should be investigated in depth. In reality, it stands in the way of the possibility of putting forward a unified electoral proposal within the reformist wing of the centre-left. Indeed, no one can delude themselves into thinking that political choices can be determined by coercion rather than by political agreement based on genuine dialogue and convergence.” Spadafora calls for realism: “Renzi already occupies the reformist space, with his parliamentary groups and his political clout. And he won’t have to collect signatures. All the other initiatives, including mine, have tried to add pieces to the puzzle, but none, on its own, is capable of achieving anything. We should therefore establish a Constituent Assembly that brings these experiences together, starting with Casa Riformista, bearing in mind that Renzi, unlike others, has expressed his willingness to build a joint project in which the leader is chosen collectively.” Ruffini does not speak of federations. “Every time the electoral law is up for debate,” he says, “instead of starting with the simple question ‘how can we strengthen democracy and public trust?’, the focus is on the question ‘how can we strengthen those currently in government?’”. And this is “a profound mistake”, he tells Il Foglio: “Politics should return to winning through ideas, not through electoral engineers. An electoral law cannot aim to hand an ever-larger parliamentary majority to a political force that represents a minority of the country.” To Ruffini, it seems that “the political establishment is mainly talking to itself: whilst outside the gap between citizens and institutions is widening, inside they are discussing formulas, thresholds, bonuses and mechanisms that seem to serve the balance of power between parties rather than the country’s needs. And when the rules are designed to narrow the field, make competition more difficult or discourage the emergence of new and smaller parties, democratic debate is impoverished. Ideas are not selected through bureaucratic obstacles or regulatory artifices.”