By now, most probably know that Italia's Partito Democratico (PD) held the second round of its primary election on Sunday and that Pierluigi Bersani defeated Matteo Renzi with nearly 61 percent of the vote. Nearly three million party members came out to choose the party secretary. They were also, effectively, choosing the party leader for the elections scheduled for next spring.
I noted in an earlier post that the PD primary was generally seen as a contest between a younger generation lead by Renzi, 37 years old and the mayor of Florence, and the old guard lead by Bersani, 61 years old, party secretary since 2009, and member of several earlier PD-lead governments. Now Bersani has won and the question is what this means for the party and its approach to the up-coming national elections.
I haven’t had time to read much commentary, but Marco Damilano has a good piece in the weekly magazine Espresso. He points out that Bersani and the PD leadership were reluctant converts to the idea of using a primary instead of the traditional party congress to choose the party secretary. Still, they did it and it is generally considered to have been a success, strengthening Bersani's position as a national leader and giving the party new credibility. Now, Damilano suggests, Bersani faces several challenges if he's to build on this. In quick summary, these are: (1) how to incorporate Renzi and his supporters into the party; (2) how to keep the old guard from pulling the party back to its old habits of opaque decision-making and meticulous balancing of contending internal “currents”; and (3) how to steer around talk of “Monti bis.”
In a sense, a larger question is what the PD primary represents for Italian politics. Was it, along with the Monti government, another step towards a healthier politics? On will it turn out to be an interesting diversion in Italian politics-as-usual? I know those two alternatives are too stark, but they suggest some of what's at stake in the next few months.
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