If there were a world ranking of political suicides, probably nine of the top ten places would be occupied by the Italian left, which throughout its history has repeatedly attempted undertakings bordering on the impossible, throwing away victories that it already had in its pocket. And Andrea Orlando’s defeat at the regionals in Liguria, given how it developed, could even end up on the podium.

Democratic Party and 5 Star Movement, a story of love and hate

It may seem strange, but this time the Democratic Party is not really at fault: adding the 28.4 obtained by Elly Schlein’s party to the excellent 6.1 of Avs, in Liguria the left is at 34.5 percent, numbers from the “Red Region “. The problem was the 5 Star Movement led by Giuseppe Conte, who succeeded in the arduous task of weakening both his coalition – by imposing the “expulsion” of Matteo Renzi and with him thousands of preferences that would have been very convenient for Orlando – and his own party, taking away from a true Genoese like Beppe Grillo something very dear to him: a consultancy contract worth 300 thousand euros a year. What sense it makes to deny an alliance only in one region, while maintaining it in all the others, remains a great mystery. Just as the meaning of opening a conflict within one’s own party in the middle of an electoral campaign remains a great mystery.

Bucci wins in Liguria, the dispute between Renzi and Conte decided the elections

Once again, in short, the fate of the Democratic Party has been sealed by the 5 Star Movement. Lingering on recent times, the “non-victory” of poor Pierluigi Bersani in the 2013 elections is still alive in the memory. With Berlusconi reduced to a minimum for having dragged the country to the brink of bankruptcy while organizing the mythological “elegant dinners” ( many voters of the current government do not remember that in 2011 they risked ending up selling chestnuts on street corners…), the then leader of the Democratic Party “did not see” the 5 Star Movement coming and by a handful of votes he obtained the majority only in the House and not in the Senate.

When Beppe Grillo favored Matteo Renzi’s sprint

The Grillini at the time were very hostile towards the Democratic Party and considered it the party to be destroyed. And so, after an ordeal broadcast in live streaming (since then they have never seen each other again…) and two aspiring presidents of the Republic were badly burned (Prodi and Marini), the second secretary in the history of the dem (between secretaries and ” regents” were ten, a record) left with a lot of tears. Who knows how many veterans from that time are still kicking themselves over that deal that wasn’t made: that decision favored the sprint of Matteo Renzi, the “scrapper” who then scrapped himself. The comedian Beppe Grillo, who sent his spokespersons Roberta Lombardi and Vito Crimi to say “no” to what could have been the first “yellow-red” government, was in fact unintentionally one of Renzi’s political fathers: the other had been the Christian Democrat Ciriaco De Mita, but shortly before passing away he disowned his student. I’m a fool who takes me almost a year to write a novel.

In Liguria the center-left was super favorite

Let’s go back to the present day. The impression is that Liguria, for the coalition that some call “Campo Largo”, was the classic penalty with an empty net. The problem is that for some obscure reason it was Giuseppe Conte who took that penalty, a holding midfielder (those who don’t shine in precision, have to cripple their opponents and throw the ball into the stands, so to speak) who was also bruised. A bit like asking Matteo Salvini to be Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, so to speak. The center-left started with favorable polls, with all the institutes giving it an advantage of at least five points and with a plus three percent of real votes recorded in the last European elections. There were at least three other factors that made the result even more possible: TotiGate, the maxi investigation by the Genoa prosecutor’s office into corruption in the Region which led to the resignation of the former governor Giovanni Toti, the low approval rating of Marco Bucci in his Genoa (in fact in the city he received fewer votes than Orlando) and the health conditions of the centre-right candidate himself, which partly penalized him, because in an electoral campaign carried out street by street, physical form also counts.

And now Edoardo Rixi is a “predestined”

Regarding the illness of the new president of the Region. The former grillino Nicola Morra, himself a candidate for president, brought up the topic with a certain clumsiness in an interview with Sheetcomparing Bucci to poor Jole Santelli, the former governor of Calabria struck down by cancer. The theme of Bucci’s fragility exists, but it is not a topic to speculate on (obviously we wish him a long life). What should, if anything, make us reflect is that inevitably the Region will have a sort of “shadow president”, embodied by the figure of the undersecretary Edoardo Rixi, extremely loyal to Salvini and already considered “predestined”. Even the League, given the way things had turned out, now considered Liguria doomed. And to say that the only non-left-wing political suicide in that singular ranking, the one that will probably occupy the first position for the next two centuries, took place in August 2019 at Papeete Beach.