One could read many heartwarming stories about the rebirth of the Italian Democratic Party (PD) thanks to the participation of roughly 1.7 million Italians in the election of Nicola Zingaretti (*1965) as the PD’s new Secretary aka party chief with over 66% of the vote.
It is true that many Italians want to stand up to the populist government made up by the extreme right Lega of Matteo Salvini and the center-left populists of the Five Star Movement of Luigi Di Maio.
However, the President of the Lazio region since 2013 represents the left wing of his party. In the March 3, 2019 election for the top job within the Italian Democratic Party, Nicola Zingaretti faced two candidates close to the former PD prime minister Matteo Renzi: fomer minister of Agriculture in the Renzi government and PD Secretary (officialy from July until November 2018) Maurizio Martina (*1978) and the market-liberal Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies Roberto Giacetti (*1961). In other words, the March 3 election of Nicola Zingaretti closed the aera Renzi (at least for the moment). This choice signals a clear move of the PD to the left.
Some observers compared the former Communist Nicola Zingaretti even to Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn. In any case, Zingaretti was a harsh critic of Matteo Renzi, who clearly made many mistakes, but who tried to move the Italian Democratic Party to the center, economically even to the center-right. Italy still needs more economic reforms. Italy’s public debt exceeds 130% of GDP, the unemployment rate is around 10% and, according to the EU Commission, Italy is expected to grow only 0.2% in 2019. The current government is not ready to respect the Maastricht criteria. In this situation, the country does not need a left-leaning leader of the opposition who is focusing on more social justice and the fight against economic equality instead of promoting market reforms and sound economic policies.
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Nicola Zingaretti in 2012. Photo: Wikipedia Commons.
Article added on March 4, 2019 at 15:14 Italian time.
