Italy’s Renzi resigns as Democratic party leader
Former prime minister triggers leadership contest in bid to sweep out party rebels
Matteo Renzi, Italy’s former prime minister, resigned as head of Italy’s ruling Democratic party on Sunday, triggering a leadership contest aimed at neutralising a rebellion of leftwing dissidents angry at his reformist agenda.
The tensions within the PD come at a delicate time in Italian politics, with general elections to be held within a year at the latest, and the anti-euro, anti-establishment Five Star Movement making a bid to emerge as the leading party. In addition, Italy’s economic performance has been lagging behind the rest of the eurozone, its banking system is vulnerable, and there are rising concerns about its inability to bring down its debt.
“We have a responsibility towards our country,” Mr Renzi said at an assembly of PD delegates in Rome on Sunday. “We cannot be engaged in internal discussions at this time. After today, let’s get back on track,” he said.
Mr Renzi, an energetic 42-year-old Florentine, led the Italian government for nearly three years until he was forced to step down last December in the wake of the heavy defeat of his flagship constitutional overhaul in a referendum. Since then, he has been trying to lay the ground work for an ambitious political comeback, but his efforts are being threatened by a group of internal critics who say his policies are too centrist and his style is too abrasive.
“The PD needs to get back to being the party of coherence, which says that it wants to defend the weakest and then actually does it,” Michele Emiliano, the governor of the Puglia region in southern Italy and one of Mr Renzi’s most high-profile intraparty challengers, said at an event in Rome on Saturday.
Mr Emiliano — along with Enrico Rossi, the governor of Tuscany, and Roberto Speranza, a PD lawmaker — are the main faces of the anti-Renzi revolt. But they are also being supported by several influential party leaders, including Massimo D’Alema, the former prime minister, and Pier Luigi Bersani, the former party secretary. Beyond disagreements on policy, the dissidents are challenging a push by Mr Renzi to hold early elections this year and threatening to leave the PD should he follow through with that plan.
Mr Renzi hopes that once he has emerged as the winner of a new leadership contest, any internal critics will either have left the party or be in a weaker position to undermine him.
At the PD gathering with Mr Renzi on Sunday, a succession of lawmakers pleaded for party unity, saying infighting could only benefit the Five Star Movement or rightwing opposition parties including the anti-euro Northern League and Forza Italia, led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
“When the left has split it has hurt itself and the country. This has been our demon,” said Walter Veltroni, who engineered the creation of the PD a decade ago by merging the reformist descendants of the Italian Communist party with left-of-centre former Christian Democrats.
But Mr Rossi lamented that the PD was building a “wall” to defend Mr Renzi. “The time is ripe to build a new political force with those citizens who do not believe the PD is leftwing any more,” he said.
According to a poll by Ipsos published in Corriere della Sera, the Italian daily, on Sunday, if the group of dissidents were to break away, this would trim between 4 per cent and 6 per cent from the PD’s support. At the moment, the PD and the Five Star Movement are polling roughly neck-and-neck at around 30 per cent.