Arturo Parisi: “Now it’s time for the primaries. Precious months have been wasted. The broad coalition must step up a gear”

Far too much time has been wasted: “We need to speed things up. Precious months have been squandered.” Is it time for primaries? “The time of reckoning has come. Dual leaderships have always been short-lived and have almost always ended in disaster.” Professor Arturo Parisi, the ideologue behind Romano Prodi’s Ulivo coalition, speaks of Elly Schlein and Giuseppe Conte. The broad coalition is pressing ahead, calling on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to step down, but it has yet to define – apart from its leader – its scope and a common vision, particularly on foreign policy and Ukraine: “A fundamental shared understanding of international relations remains one of the key aspects that allows us to speak of belonging to the same coalition,” Parisi tells Il Foglio. And what is the state of the centre-left today? “It is lagging far, far behind.” 

Let’s proceed in order. Professor, the opposition parties are calling for Meloni’s resignation and a snap election. Schlein and Conte, as well as AVS leaders Fratoianni and Bonelli, are repeating: “We’re ready; it’s our turn”. However, there are quite a few issues to resolve. Is there a real need to step up the pace on leadership and the programme? “Who could blame her?”, replies Parisi. “It is, first and foremost, the opposition who are saying that we are now in an election campaign. They are the ones saying it, asking for it and demanding it. Ever since the March referendum, the leaders have been shouting – as never before in unison – ‘elections’.” What doesn’t add up? “What is still unclear is whether this means ‘we are ready’, a challenge directed at others, or rather ‘we must get ready’, that is, a call to step up the pace directed first and foremost at themselves.” A bit of both, perhaps. Certainly, knowing who is leading the coalition – and what their characteristics are – could help. On the other hand, the new electoral reform provides for the designation of a leader. Has the time come for primaries? “The truth has come to light,” says the former Defence Minister in Prodi’s second government. “Of course, the text of the law formally requires it. And in this respect, Meloni – by forcing the opposition to reveal its main weakness – has nonetheless achieved a significant result. But beyond the formalities, the crux of the matter stems from reality.” What do you mean? “Whether we like it or not, politics is driven by an impulse, if not an outright monarchical necessity. However limited, moderate or temporary that ‘archy’ may be. Diarchies have always been short-lived, and have almost always ended in tragedy. I said as much on the very evening of the referendum, when Conte first suggested primaries as the only way to untangle the knot, within a shared framework. They are difficult to organise, and even more difficult to avoid.’ Since then, the broad coalition, at least on this point, has not made much progress. “Far from focusing on how to organise them, the usual dance around the manifesto has begun instead, behind which those who do not want to hold primaries generally hide,” says Parisi. “It is the dance between those who argue that the manifesto must be agreed upon first and those who maintain that it can only be defined within the primaries, albeit within a framework of shared values.” What is the result? “After wasting years denying the problem arising from the existence of two contenders for a single position, precious months have been squandered when we should have been working to resolve it. And now – argues Parisi – time is measured in days.”

Schlein and Conte, the leaders of the two main opposition parties, are in the running. “That’s where we start. On the one hand, Schlein is the secretary of the party that is the strongest in terms of votes; on the other, Conte, who has headed a coalition government and has been hailed as ‘a key point of reference for all progressive forces’. A clever move. In a world of words and narratives, it’s an extremely clever move. Were it not for the fact that the head of the coalition government has now become the leader of the second-largest party in the camp – a party genetically incapable of seeing itself as a sister party, let alone being promoted with a pat on the back as the younger sibling.” Parisi, in his political career alongside Prodi, has seen the primaries up close. Will it be a two-horse race, or could there be room for a third contender? “I repeat: it starts with Schlein and Conte. And yet,” observes Parisi, “in an open process – as these primaries inevitably must be – it is impossible to say what will happen next. Just think of the primaries won by Schlein, who hadn’t even been a member of the PD a few months earlier.” In any case, the choice of leader would also determine a different approach to the coalition. And, above all, a different vision of foreign policy. This is the major issue facing the camp: is it possible to form a government without resolving it? “Certainly not. Even if the interpretation of the world within which one intends to apply a shared conception of international relations is to be one of the points of debate between the candidates, a fundamental common ground is one of the essential prerequisites that allows us to speak of belonging to the same coalition. Certainly – concludes Parisi – this is one of the issues on which we are lagging far, far behind.”