Action, the great escape from Calenda. How bitter about the farewells of Carfagna, Gelmini and Versace –

After Enrico Costa, Mariastella Gelmini, Mara Carfagna and Giusy Versace are also leaving Azione. The decision had been in the air for days, but the move, among others, of the spokesperson and the president of Carlo Calenda’s party to the Mixed group – at least for now – is making waves. “My journey in Azione ends today. I had a calm and honest discussion with Carlo Calenda and as far as I’m concerned, the esteem and gratitude towards him remain unchanged, but the political choices of the movement that I enthusiastically joined two years ago are going in a direction that I cannot share because it is significantly different from the original one. My discomfort in recent months is well known and the decision to enter the broad field in an alliance that includes the 5 Star Movement and the left of Bonelli and Fratoianni in the three regions that will go to the polls in the fall, forces me to acknowledge with regret that I cannot stay”, says Gelmini. “I do not come from the left and I do not intend to join it now: I was and remain a popular moderate and I will continue the same battles linearly”, she adds. Especially weighing is the choice made by Carlo Calenda’s party in Liguria, where Azione will support Andrea Orlando and not the current mayor of Genoa Marco Bucci.

In Transatlantico there are rumors – unconfirmed – of a possible arrival of the senator to Noi moderateti, while the opposition is looking at what Gelmini, starting tomorrow, will do in Vigilanza Rai, where she was the only parliamentarian of Azione. “I learned from an agency note that I left Azione. It is a decision that I was maturing but that I felt the duty to make public in more serious and less extemporaneous ways”, Carfagna argues. “Already in the last group meeting I had openly expressed my dissent for the opening of an ‘exclusive’ dialogue with the left”, he specifies and even Giusy Versace tears up because, she explains, “the wide field cannot be my home”. “We respect personal choices but we believe it is serious and inconsistent to move from opposition to majority in the middle of the legislature, thus contravening the mandate of the voters – the lapidary comment of Azione in a note – A practice that contributes to alienating citizens from politics. Azione will remain where the citizens have placed it: at the center and in opposition to the Government and will continue to work to build an alternative to a failing bipolarism”.

From Calenda’s headquarters they try to see the glass half full: “A day of clarity. For two months undeniable backstories had been coming out and negotiating with the entire center-right in parallel. The party couldn’t take it anymore”, the line. However, the sarcasm of Renzi’s supporters arrives promptly. “The disegregAzione of Azione, from the city council of Rome to the Senate, is the demonstration of how Carlo Calenda has destroyed an extraordinary political capital not out of malice but out of total, incredible, evident political incapacity – writes Francesco Bonifazi, deputy of Italia Viva, on X -. Calenda is a technician, he can be the chief of staff, not the political leader”.