Michele Laforgia dissolves his last reservations about the primaries – strongly supported by the Democratic Party – to choose the centre-left candidate for mayor of Bari, and entrusts a video message addressed to the Puglia Democratic Party with the exhortation not to have any more hesitations: “Enough, you decide the rules and take responsibility for them. I I will accept the outcome of the vote whatever it may be.”
“Time is up. We are less than three months away from the vote – underlines the lawyer who is running together with Vito Leccese for the candidacy for Palazzo di Città – and the progressive coalition needs to take on a face and a defined identity around a mayoral candidate. Continuing to discuss the rules is useless, because it is now clear that a pretext will always be found to deny consent and delay any decision, until it is too late. We cannot and I cannot allow it. I therefore publicly tell the Democratic Party to decide, in full autonomy and without further exhausting negotiations, when, where and how to vote in the primaries. Let’s call them primary at this point, since we didn’t want to choose, together, a new, more rigorous method.”
“Let’s remove any pretext from those who want to divide the progressive area. Let them establish the rules and assume full responsibility for them. I will accept the outcome of the vote whatever it may be”, comments the lawyer, addressing directly the Apulian Democratic Party with which the debate on the voting rules has been open for days”.
“One last thing. Don’t let it be said once again that we wasted time and we could have voted six months ago. We tried for months to find an agreement, by mutual agreement, first of all on the contents. Six months ago Vito Leccese wasn’t even a candidate and in the PD there was no agreement on its candidates. If the judicial investigation had not arrived in the meantime, some of those arrested would have also been an active part of the primaries, with a catastrophic effect for the credibility of the entire coalition. When we thank the police and the judiciary we should do it for this too. Now there is no more time: we are waiting for the voting date for the primaries. There are no more alibis.”
The request to pre-register up to 24 hours before the vote did not make inroads with the PD: inclined towards broad and popular participation. From the video message, to avoid a split in the coalition, today Michele Laforgia agrees to take part in the primaries according to the rules of the Democratic Party, specifying and inviting – however – Elly Schlein’s party to take on the responsibilities.
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Published on the topic: Bari elections, PD: ‘Broad and popular primaries, not elitist’