Sensi: “About Hamas Acerbo has stepped in a ‘pile of rubbish’. The broad coalition cannot accommodate everything”

“We’re going from bad to worse.” This is what Filippo Sensi, a senator for the Democratic Party, told Il Foglio, commenting on tweets by Maurizio Acerbo, secretary of Rifondazione Comunista, who last night—perhaps in the grip of Sunday boredom—went so far as to ask: “Is it forbidden to praise Hamas?”. The answer is obvious. But at the same time, it is causing “embarrassment and unease within the centre-left coalition”, says Sensi. All the more so because, since last week – as our newspaper reported – Democratic Party Senator Andrea Crisanti has left the PD group in the Senate to join the Mixed Group, thereby enabling Rifondazione to form a parliamentary group and circumvent the obstacles to submitting a list imposed by the new electoral law. A move that brings Acerbo’s party into the broader political camp, this time in an organic manner.

They say a good start is half the battle. “We do you the favour of lending you a senator to help you collect signatures following the approval of the new electoral law, and this is how you repay us – with two tweets like that?” Sensi lashes out. This morning, condemning Rifondazione’s stance, the senator wrote, precisely: “We even lent this clown a senator.” Acerbo, Sensi continues, “realised he’d stepped in, shall we say, a pile of rubbish” and corrected himself with “a tweet 780,000 pages long” to clarify his position. “It means he too realised that those two tweets were wrong.”

But there are no consequences, at least for now. Will you call for the withdrawal of support or for Schlein to intervene? “That is not the issue,” clarifies Sensi. Should the PD take a step back from this move, then? “We all know what Rifondazione is and what its positions are – I’m thinking of Ukraine, on which I hold the opposite view. The point is that certain manoeuvres are made necessary by the electoral law. That is the poison of this law: it forces us to broaden the coalitions, taking everyone on board. And this represents a high and steep price to pay.”

Acerbo’s clarification – “It is well known that Rifondazione does not sympathise with Hamas, unlike Netanyahu, who has channelled billions to them to divide the Palestinians” – is, for Sensi, the “bare minimum”. But the problem remains broader: in building a broad coalition, he insists, “clarity is needed. I am in favour of clarity. We must realise that when we take on board everything and its opposite – and within that ‘everything and its opposite’ there are many things that are diametrically opposed to the values we uphold – a risk is created.”

“Things like this are the poisonous fruits of the new electoral law, but also of our own choices,” warns the senator. “I am in favour of a very broad coalition, bringing together all the opposition forces, who must find a political and electoral proposal that everyone can agree on. I am not one to veto or decide who is like me and who is not.” But there is a distinction to be made: “It is one thing to speak to everyone; it is quite another to bring on board any group or micro-group in the name of the supposed fraction of a per cent it might bring. If what they stand for is diametrically opposed to what we believe in, they may drive away more voters than they bring in.”

Criticism of this kind has also come from Carlo Calenda and Pina Picierno, who has left the Democratic Party. Sensi, on the other hand, defends his decision to wage this battle from within the PD, whilst continuing to criticise the coalition’s contradictions. Calenda has also publicly denounced the situation on social media: “Congratulations to Elly Schlein and the PD for helping these people get into Parliament. You’re no better than those who support Casapound,” he wrote. Sensi responds as follows: “Insults don’t bother me. I care deeply about the centre-left; I care deeply that it wins the next election. I’m against this right-wing movement, and I believe this is best achieved within the political groups and parties that have strength and influence.” There is, in fact, consistency: "I am consistent. I am fighting this battle from within the Democratic Party and within the centre-left, because I do not want the centre-left to be left at the mercy of Maurizio Acerbo’s tweets. I am not doing it from the outside." A good start… as we were saying. But from here on, it’s all an uphill struggle.