Toti dumped by bipartisan justicialists. Renzi’s letter to –

The leader of Italia Viva responds to those who attack him for having chosen to be part of the coalition with Schlein & Co. “Excess on both sides, we are mitigating it”. And “Italy loves bipolarism, I chose the center-left”

Matthew Renzi

July 29, 2024

Dear Editor, yesterday your newspaper published an interview with my friend Enrico Costa entitled «They are foaming at the mouth and Renzi is willing to digest positions that are opposed to his». I respect Enrico Costa to the point of having wanted him in my Government first as Deputy Minister of Justice and then as Minister of Regional Affairs. Precisely for this reason, I feel the duty to respond to these expressions so awkward and unjust.

I don’t know who is foaming at the mouth and I don’t care. I know that on the issue of justice I am not available to digest positions that are opposed to mine. But I know that in the center-left as in the center-right there are many justicialists. There are on the left, of course. And Italia Viva did not participate in the demonstration in Genoa to ask for Toti’s resignation. My friend Costa – still deputy secretary of Azione – does not realize that in the square there was a regional councilor of Azione, that in the square there was the candidate of Azione for the European Parliament but in the square, in that square, Italia Viva was not there.

Why? Because I always said that we would not have a campaign of justice against Toti. And we did not.

Dear Director, when Lella Paita was torpedoed by the radical left and then defeated by the right in the 2015 Regionals, no one remembers that it was the center-right that played the justice card against Lella. We could have given the right back its (Ligurian) tit for tat. But we didn’t. And precisely remembering that page of legal and political incivility, we did not join the judicial chorus against Toti. We were in opposition to Toti and we will be part of the center-left coalition but without ever using barbaric and handcuffing language.

Once we have said that there are justicialists on the left, what do we do? Do we close our eyes and pretend not to see that there are some on the right too?

Don’t get me wrong, director, here you can’t say: shared misery is half joy. But know that I don’t accept double standards.

My friend Costa is kind enough to remember my personal story. I have suffered illegitimate searches, abusive wiretaps, illegal publications. My family was massacred, my life turned upside down, my affections violated in the most intimate sphere. Yet I resisted and never gave up, thanks also to the affection of my loved ones.

Many wanted me out of politics: but I resisted and I resist because I do not want to give the executioners the satisfaction of having kicked me out. If Giovanni Toti chose to give up, he must have had his personal reasons, which I respect. Because after three months of deprivation of freedom I understand that it must not be easy to continue fighting.
But I don’t understand why his majority didn’t support him to the end. Could it be that even on the right someone willingly took advantage of the judicial affair?

I say it clearly: I will never take lessons in guarantees from this right. It is the right of Giorgia Meloni who made videos against my brother-in-law who was investigated with great fanfare and acquitted in the silence of almost all the media ( was a praiseworthy exception, thank you). It is the right of the League born with the noose in Parliament and then discovered to be a guaranteeist with the Padanians, a vigilante with its adversaries. It is the right that massacred me on Open, on banks, on conferences abroad: all issues from which we emerged archived or acquitted. And we have not yet heard the magic word: sorry.

It is the right that is a guarantor with Delmastro and a justiciar with its opponents. Just as the radical left is a guarantor with its own defendants and a justiciar with its opponents.

I cannot forget, moreover, that when the leader of Costa, Carlo Calenda, decided to close the third pole experience, he posted on Facebook that he – unlike me – had never received notices of investigation. And so I tell my friend Enrico that lessons in guarantees are always useful in this ramshackle political world, but if he really wants to be a professor, he should start calling his regional councilors, his candidates and his secretary back to class. When Costa has explained guarantees to his people, we will gladly thank him for his commendable service. But don’t use guarantees to contest our choice of side for the center-left.

Both the left and the right have an excess of legalism that we will try to mitigate. The fact of having chosen to be with the center-left everywhere arises from a fact. The European elections have shown that the Third Pole is irrelevant. And if it is in a competition with proportional representation, imagine what could happen in a two-way clash with the majoritarian system.

I am very sorry: I have taken more than two hundred thousand personal preferences. I would have liked to represent them in Brussels. But Italy loves bipolarism more than we do.

And so it is time for clarity. So either you are with the center-right or the center-left. We at Italia Viva have chosen to be with the center-left, in a transparent and intellectually honest way. We will bring our values ​​and we will discuss the program.

We will be civilized, without ever giving in to the culture of hate and insult. I hope that the right-wing guarantors are able to escape the logic of double standards and try to make themselves heard in their field. Then may the best man win. Without foaming at the mouth, ever.