In the Assembly remotely, the most unusual of the investitures to the former premier. The discourse that holds young people and political alliances together. The quotes and fogged glasses. What will remain of this day
As a first snapshot of Enrico Letta’s secretariat they will remember his glasses, his fogged lenses, while he tries to balance the wicker basket containing various species of polychrome flowers that the president has just given him. Valentina Cuppi, the deputy secretaries regent Debora Serracchiani e Anna Ascani. A genre (scenic) recovery after the spice of controversy that had accompanied the birth of the Draghi government. The Assembly of 1021 delegates, gathered on Zoom (you can guess an Andrea Marcucci in shirt sleeves, a Valeria Fedeli with the usual amaranth hedgehog in the foreground, glimpses of the living room behind Assuntela Messina) has just certified the obvious: the only candidacy presented to the National Assembly to compete for the office of secretary receives formal endorsement: 860 yes, 2 against, 4 abstentions.
Shortly before, for over an hour, there had been the Lettian opening speech. Starting with thanks to Nicola Zingaretti, “with whom I have a long and sincere friendship. We will do many things together and work well”. Then move on to a list (“a vademecum”) of proposals that the new secretary himself will undertake to submit to the community of the Democratic Party with a 2-week tour in local circles. “The fall of the pandemic will have the same effect, in releasing energy, of the fall of Berlin. We as a Democratic Party have a duty to be there, not looking at our navel. The enthusiasm that will be born is the enthusiasm of life that wins”, he says with the aforementioned enthusiasm.
And in the progress of the intervention, ideal appeals and contingent concerns coexist. “Our politics must bring together the soul and the screwdriver. We need to know which screw to turn for the soul of the party to work. I think we must be progressive in values, reformists in method and be radical in behavior. Today I am applying as the new secretary of the Democratic Party but I know that you do not need a new secretary, but a new Democratic Party, a party with its doors open to all. “Here is the new imperative:” The Democratic Party must be the party of young people. School and university will be the center of the new project “. Starting from gender disparity, work and the theme of sustainability, all keywords that find space in the discourse. (Even the ius soli. That was enough for Salvini to blur out:” It starts badly right away. “).
At some point, when he is about to quote Beniamino Andreatta (after putting together the Scorpions of “Wind of change”, a step of Jean paul Sartre, the masks of Luigi Pirandello, a show by Gabriele Lavia, an article by Gianfranco Pasquino and a comment by Romano Prodi) streaming audio flickers. About twenty seconds are lost like this: how many times will it have happened to him in the lessons in dad of the Schools of Politics or in Science Po? And certainly also in the passages in which he invokes a reconstruction of the center left (“I will call everyone, from Roberto Speranza, to Carlo Calenda, Emma Bonino, Matteo Renzi”), he clarifies what are the bases for an alliance with the Five stars (“we will go to confrontation with Giuseppe Conte with respect and apprehension “), starting from a rethinking of one’s identity (” if we become the party of power, we die “), the lack of a sound context, of applause, pauses, modulations of the voice, hand (replaced by gentle elbows) inscribes the dictation in the academic module, which one can go and review whenever he wants, postdating the impressions. The comparison with the stages of Veltroni, Bersani, Renzi, fished by an artificial imaginary because it is too different, does not hold up: there is the same distance that exists between a concert and live in a video game. “I did not leave my commitments to lead you towards defeat,” he concludes. But the reaction is the muffled applause of three people. The standing ovation (sitting) at the time of the pandemic.