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ITALY-POLITICS-ELECTION
Italy chooses centre-left leader to battle populists
ROME, March 3, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Supporters of Italy’s fractured centre-left
opposition Democratic Party (PD) choose a new leader on Sunday who they hope
can take on the ruling populist coalition led by the far-right Lega.
The PD was left reeling and languishing in the polls since the anti-
establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the anti-immigrant Lega won power
in elections and formed a government in June of last year.
The three leadership candidates are little known internationally, with
Nicola Zingaretti, who has been compared to Britain’s Labour chief Jeremy
Corbyn, the favourite to win.
Around 7,000 polling stations, including 150 abroad, are being staffed by
35,000 volunteers with voting due to end at 1900 GMT.
Zingaretti, 53, is currently the president of the Lazio region, which
includes Rome, and is a former Italian Communist party member as well as a
founding member of the PD in 2007.
He was a member of the European parliament and is a supporter of European
federalism who has criticised austerity measures.
Roberto Giachetti, 57, is considered the closest candidate to former PD
leader and prime minister Matteo Renzi’s more centrist free-market politics
and was previously a member of the Radical and Green parties.
He lost the Rome mayoral election to M5S’s Virginia Raggi in 2016.
The third candidate, Maurizio Martina, 40, was agriculture minister in the
governments of Renzi and his PD successor, Paolo Gentiloni.
He briefly took over as PD leader when Renzi stepped down last year.
– No populist alliance –
The candidates have been using social media to try to get more than a
million people out to vote. Those voting must sign a declaration of PD
support and pay a fee of two euros (just over two dollars).
A candidate can win outright with over 50 percent of the vote, or a party
conference on March 17 will choose between the top two candidates.
All three candidates have excluded an alliance with the M5S, which won 220
seats in the lower house elections last year compared to the PD’s 112.
The far-right Lega party won 123 seats but has overtaken the M5S in
opinion polls since then thanks largely to Lega leader and Interior Minister
Matteo Salvini’s tough anti-immigrant line.
The left is nevertheless finding its feet again, bringing tens of
thousands onto the streets of Milan on Saturday for an anti-racism
demonstration.
The Milan demonstration was a reply to those who have imposed a policy of
“closure and exclusion” that has become intolerable, elder PD statesman
Romano Prodi told La Repubblica newspaper.
“The anti-racist march and the PD primary are two completely different
things. But they are a response to the same sensibility and worries,” said
the two-time prime minister and former European Commission president.
Renzi, who resigned after a failed referendum on constitutional reform in
2016 but remained PD leader until last year, voted in the primary in his
hometown Florence.
The man who in 2014 became Italy’s youngest-ever premier refused to
publicly back a candidate, saying the “different movements that were with me
over the years have divided themselves among all three candidates”.
Renzi, 44, remains popular and has appealed against infighting whatever
the result.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1854 hrs