Basilicata, Calenda supports the centre-right. Storm for Pittella’s audio –

In the followingmath of a weekend of chaos in the centre-left, which in 24 hours of tight meetings had to change candidate, choosing Piero Marrese following the withdrawal of Domenico Lacerenza, the week in Basilicata opens with the attention focused on Action. Carlo Calenda’s party announces the agreement reached with Vito Bardi’s centre-right, but the news that shortly followingwards ignites the controversy comes from the Lucanian leader Marcello Pittella, who in a private audio claims to have been treated by former allies Pd and M5S, like a Jew sent to die. In short, five weeks before the regional elections in Basilicata, coalitions and candidates are being defined, while the electoral campaign continues amidst stumbles, controversies and bold reversals of course by the actors in the field.

“The statement from Schlein’s trusted man has arrived – says Pittella in the voice message sent to his followers – which says that Action cannot participate in the centre-left list because Calenda had some harsh words regarding the Democratic Party and Conte and above all because he said that Bardi is a good person.” “A statement that makes you feel impatient,” says Pittella who continues: “Do you know when they deported the Jews and had to take them to the gas chamber? Well, for them I am a Jew who must die.” The words unleash a storm that Pittella’s apologies only partially calm: “Days of stress and emotional tension have generated an unjustified and totally unwanted hyperbole in a private audio – the Action manager justifies himself – Words that I used to represent the way in which, following having governed the Region for the center-left with dignity and honor, we were treated. I am deeply sorry for what happened and I apologize to anyone who may have felt offended.”

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The leader of the M5S, Giuseppe Conte, attacks in the evening: Calenda and Pittella, he says, “complain regarding a veto once morest them, and apart from the shameful reference to ‘Jews to be sent to die’, one thing struck me regarding Pittella’s audio He, from a family that has governed those territories for 40 years with varying success, never talks regarding projects. And in the end he says ‘let’s go with the centre-right who will welcome us’, and in fact they are welcoming him. But there is no reference to projects: here we are talking regarding packages of votes that are transferred and voters are treated like a commodity.” Conte then reiterates that he cannot ally himself with those who he says want to “destroy the 5 Star Movement”. Calenda’s response followed closely: “Conte put the veto, the Democratic Party accepted it. Evidently the one who decides in the end is Giuseppe Conte”. To which the leader of Action reproaches: “The politics that horrifies me is always the same Giuseppe: the money thrown into the superbonus, the proputinism, the promise of subsidies ‘gradually’. But I recognize the fact of having tamed the Democratic Party by forcing it to your vetoes. Congratulations.”