No wide field in Florence. After months of negotiations, still one step away from closure, there will be no agreement between Pd and M5S for the municipal elections: the grillini will run alone, with the lawyer Lorenzo Masi, outgoing city councilor, as mayoral candidate. Masi had been the main sponsor of the agreement with the Democratic Party, but his candidacy is not a paradox, indeed it could be a clue to understanding what is behind the lack of agreement for the first round: not a goodbye, but the promise of a see you in extra time.
In other words, relations between the Democratic Party and M5S have become cordial but apparently it is convenient for no one to make this agreement official in the first round, that of 8 and 9 June. First of all, because the municipal elections are held in conjunction with the European elections, a race in which the parties – with the proportional system – run against each other, regardless of the coalitions. Then there are the side effects that this last minute agreement would have produced, both in coalition relations and at the ballot box: Action would have turned up its nose (quite a bit) at an entry of the M5S into the original group of parties that are part of the cartel for Sara Funaro; the Movement would certainly have had a heavy hemorrhage of votes caused by the agreement with its historical adversary.
The fact is that the Florentine soap opera about the entry of the 5 Star Movement into the coalition built by the Democratic Party ends a few hours after the official deadline for the presentation of the lists, which has its deadline on Saturday at noon. Months of negotiations, more Roman than Florentine, which followed years of all-out struggle. In fact, no one forgets how the political entity founded by Beppe Grillo and Gianroberto Casaleggio waged some of the strongest battles against the city’s governing party in Florence. From the all-out fight, the thermometer of the clash faded in the shadow of David with the entry into the field of Giuseppe Conte: when the five-star Tuscan leaders were designated by the former prime minister’s management group, a change of direction was felt. Encouraged, on the other hand, by the victory at the Pd congress – also the Tuscan one – of the area close to Elly Schlein, who has always considered it a priority to widen the field to include former opponents.
This has been discussed extensively in meetings over the last month, with the negotiation on opposition to the Movement’s airport acting as a lightning rod for the real stakes: the convenience of being allies in an administrative session that will almost certainly offer the final battle on June 23, in the run-off. THEThe M5S would like to arrive at that moment with a haul of votes that can make a differencea – among the candidates also the outgoing city councilor Roberto De Blasi, who has always been against the alliance with the Democrats -, the Democratic Party would need to be able to count on the support of new allies who will give fuel to the engine for the final fight.
But which ones? For Funaro it would be complicated to turn to Sinistra Progetto Comune, which has a diametrically opposite vision of the city administration; difficulties would also arise for a dialogue with the democratic Florence of Cecilia Del Re, who left the Democratic Party after slamming the door only a few months ago. Italia Viva, the current government ally in Palazzo Vecchio, would remain. But even in that case, the presence of the 5 Star Movement in the PD-led coalition would represent a preliminary limit to a dialogue for the Renzians.
