“I am ready to lead this community and lead it as a candidate for council president, with or without a primary.” PD secretary Elly Schlein said this at the PD national assembly in Rome. "Now there is a mile to go, we are ready immediately to sit down with the other progressive forces to complete a common program. This week too we wrote a resolution with 21 points of shared economic and social policy. But we need to be all of us, not alone, we need the entire progressive alliance that governs in the regions. We need to broaden, not narrow." "To those who support a draw and think of a leader more open to broad agreements, we say: never more broad agreements, we are here to win with our progressive alliance".
"They had bet against us, they had bet that we would split. Remember in 2022 there was someone who had already written the obituary of the democratic party and instead we raised our heads again. They had bet that we would split", he added, turning to the president Stefano Bonaccini, "but today the democratic party is more united than ever. They had bet that I wouldn't last six months and instead I'm still here. In fact, it's the first time that a secretary of the Democratic Party finishes her mandate", he added.
"The surprise will be us, this time. And that there are those in those parts who don't want a leftist, Palazzo Chigi is nothing new, it's the history of this country. But we are here to surprise them. I can only offer my personal aggravating circumstances, Being a woman, being forty, being free and not really conforming to all the standards" continued Schlein. "But I want to give them some news: we are here to do exactly what our people expect from us. And if anyone doesn't accept that the Democratic Party is free, autonomous and responds only to its base of voters, they will be very right about it. Because if their standards were valid in the country, I would never have gotten here. And I think that this will be the challenge of redeeming all those who have always been told that they couldn't do it, that they aren't adequate, that they have to dedicate themselves to something else, that they are too much or too little. Bonino said, continue to be too much."
The speech at the national assembly of Terra Comune
"With the forces of the progressive alliance we no longer have any intention of ever doing the right a favor by dividing us. We will remain united and united to build the alternative, and not alone, but hopefully together with you". The secretary of the Democratic Party Elly Schlein said this at the national assembly of Terra Comune in Rome. "The first thing you give us today is a method: as you said - he added -, here you don't all think the same way about everything, but you have decided to listen to each other, to make your differences a value, and to be able to discuss until you find a synthesis that allows you to take a step forward together. This is exactly the work we are doing with the forces of the Progressive Alliance".
"We need to guarantee healthy food for everyone, with a policy to fight food waste and poverty. Here there are many associations that work against food poverty, environmentalist associations: let's join forces, we need to bring a different method to the government of the country, which is one that does not impose answers from above but listens to the best practices and makes them a policy that concerns the whole country", said Schlein. "I think we should also evaluate monthly food support - he added -, overcome the logic of the bonuses of which this government has become the champion and instead try to imagine a tool that also manages to encourage healthier eating behaviours, without paternalism however. We need to give concrete support to low-income families, and be able to build it with an increase linked to inflation. Here - he added in his speech to the audience also followed by Angelo Bonelli and Nicola Fratoianni - the Avs comrades are rightly drawing attention to the fact that inflation in recent years has literally eaten up the incomes and wages of Italians while the government stood by and watched."
"The extraordinary demonstration of the associations of La Via Maestra and the CGIL, which yesterday peacefully filled the streets of Rome, sends us a clear and precise message: it is time for an alternative to a right-wing government that defends privileges and lobbies, does not provide answers to the country's malaise and problems and does not address the social emergencies of families and businesses. Its only concern is to fill the arsenals and not the granaries", as Angelo Bonelli and Nicola Fratoianni of Avs said in a note. "Yesterday's demonstration imposes on all the oppositions the responsibility to launch a clear project for the alternative. For this reason we turn to the other oppositions: let's build together a large united demonstration against the high cost of living and to increase the wages of Italians. Let's meet to decide the date and the platform together. The program we have to write lives if it crosses the mobilization of the people. The time is now. We are ready", they conclude.
"We will do our best to share a serious project that must not only be successful in the immediate future, because it is not enough to beat this right and send it home, which is absolutely the priority objective. We must change the country, therefore we must govern for five years", said the leader of the M5s Giuseppe Conte, at the national assembly of Terra Comune, in Rome, speaking of the progressive camp.
Bonelli: 'Violent people in the square are criminals, the Interior Ministry must identify them'
"It is not up to us to identify the criminals, the Minister of the Interior must think about this. But I want to say something very clear: we condemn the violence. The authors of that violence are our enemies, our adversaries, because they not only overshadow but cancel the legitimate protests of those who choose to take to the streets today for a better school, against the high cost of living. And we are seeing it in these hours, an ignoble right is using and exploiting against us what happened yesterday". Angelo Bonelli, of Avs, said this on the sidelines of the national assembly. "But those who carried out that violence are not just criminals, but are our enemies because they raise and cancel the just claims of those who took to the streets", underlined the leader of Green Europe. Are there responsibilities of those who manage public order? "I don't know - he replied -, I only know that we don't know who these people are. However, yesterday I saw boys and girls opposing these violent people. I saw a girl trying to put out a fire, because among those who demonstrated yesterday, the vast majority are peaceful. Those who committed violence have damaged the reasons of those who today want a better Italy. And it is no coincidence that today the right uses this violence to point the finger at us, especially us at Avs, who are ontogenetically non-violent, because violence is absolutely antithetical to our way of acting. That violence in those squares helps this right to erase the economic and social disaster that exists in the country."
"I speak for the Green and Left Alliance, because we have not yet reached a synthesis on the issue of Ukraine. As is known, we are for a clear discontinuity that puts the issue of peace negotiation at the center, because the Ukrainians have also been asking for this for almost five years", said Bonelli, answering a question on the position of the progressive camp on Ukraine. "There were almost a million victims between dead and wounded in the conflict in Ukraine. After that - added Bonelli - we are absolutely determined, as the Green Alliance and the left, to tear up the commitment that Giorgia Meloni has made on 5% of the GDP, because we want to allocate those resources to Italy, to the Italians. We are the true patriots, certainly not this right which has effectively sold the money, taxes, taxation and future of Italy to the interests of the American war industry. Those An additional 500 billion euros must be allocated to public health, to the salaries of Italians and to modernization and innovation processes to produce new jobs."
"There is an ignoble right that exploits the violence to hold us accountable. Yesterday I even heard that we were the instigators, the instigators of crime. A fact of unprecedented gravity for which this right assumes responsibility, an accusation that we reject to the sender. Those who committed that violence are our adversaries." According to Bonelli "AVS is scary today, because it is a political force that is growing. And the clear and clear programmatic proposals that we have, from the point of view of economic and social policy, of work, of the environment, of energy, of international law, instill fear. They know that these are the only ways to bring about real change in Italy, in Europe and also in the world. And therefore they point the finger at us".
Fratoianni: 'Processions called by the unknown 'Italy in the square', questions must be asked'
"Naturally, as far as we are concerned, violence is never an answer, it is always the problem. Because it obscures the protests and risks obscuring their reasons. However, we must read what happens, because distancing ourselves and condemning the violence is right and sacrosanct, but it is not enough when, as happened yesterday, we see young people, very young people, convening using acronyms that are unknown to me at least." Nicola Fratoianni, of Avs, said this on the sidelines of the national assembly of Terra Comune, in Rome.
"Yesterday there was an acronym that called for demonstrations, Italy in the square, of which at least I cannot trace any origin: we need to ask ourselves questions, because - added the leader of the Italian Left - otherwise even the right, dutiful distancing from the violence risks not being sufficient to organize a response, to understand what is happening in particular among the younger ones". So you have some suspicions about the matrix? "I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, I'm just saying - Fratoianni's reply - that I tried to understand what's happening, because understanding is the job of those who do politics. Frankly there are many aspects that I can't put into perspective. And when this concerns young people, the very young, it's an issue that needs to be explored in depth, to understand. Because, I repeat, distancing oneself, condemning violence, however necessary, otherwise risks not being sufficient".
The progressive camp "is missing centimeters" to find an agreement on the issue of Ukraine which "will be filled as soon as possible". "As we can see, even on this front, progress is continuous and significant - he explained - already in Parliament, on the occasion of the latest resolutions on the European Council. And the centimeters that are still missing to define a full agreement will be filled as soon as possible".
To bring the electorate that had mobilized for the referendum on justice closer to the progressive camp, "we must continue to do what we are doing, that is, pronounce together, in chorus, and in unison, as happened yesterday, very clear words regarding the alternative we have in mind: a country that instead of investing in weapons invests in healthcare, in schools, in research, in salaries, in the salaries of Italians who have lost 9.2% of their purchasing power from 2021 to today".
We must "invest resources, as this plural platform which is calling us to discuss this morning asks us - he added -, invest them for a transition to the agroecological model, for food sovereignty, for healthy, fair food, to change a model which on this front in recent years has seen hundreds of thousands of medium-small businesses disappear in favor of large companies, the large food industry, large-scale retail trade. These are models that do not hold up and require a point of view and a gaze capable of indicating an alternative. This is how we recover the spirit of that referendum, with the need to offer this country a clear alternative".
