Former Italian PM Renzi launches comeback bid

Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Monday launched a comeback bid with a move to reassert his authority over his fractious Democratic Party before an election due in the next year.

Published: 14 February 2017 08:45 CET

Former Italian PM Renzi launches comeback bid

Matteo Renzi stepped down following a failed referendum bid last year. Photo: Vincenzo Pinto/AFP

Renzi, who quit as premier after losing a December referendum but still leads the PD, secured the backing of the party's executive for an assembly that will set a date for the leadership vote.

“We are coming to the end of a cycle,” Renzi told fellow party heavyweights, confirming he would again be a candidate to lead the party into elections that must take place by next February.

Renzi is reported to favour a June date for an election which will see his party go head to head with the populist Five Star Movement, which is running the PD close in the opinion polls.

But he insisted on Monday that he did not think it was up to him when the election was held.

Renzi stepped down as premier after his constitutional reform proposals were overwhelmingly rejected. But he made it clear he planned to return and was widely seen as having hand-picked his successor, Paolo Gentiloni, as a stand-in who would pose no long-term threat to that.

Five Star also backs an early election but lawmakers must first agree on a new electoral law, a task which many feel will delay the vote until the autumn at least.

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The strike comes after Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama — who is close to Meloni — called a top RAI editor to complain about a television report into Italy’s controversial migration deal with his country.

The Usigrai trade union called the strike from May 6 to May 7 saying talks with management had failed to address their concerns.

It cited numerous issues, including staff shortages and contract issues, but in first place was “the suffocating control over journalistic work, with the attempt to reduce RAI to a megaphone for the government”.

It had already used that phrase to object to what critics say is the increasing influence over RAI by figures close to Prime Minister Meloni, who leads Italy’s most right-wing government since World War II.

However, another union of RAI journalists, Unirai, said they would not join what they called a “political” strike, defending the return to “pluralism” at the broadcaster.

Funded in part by a licence fee and with top managers long chosen by politicians, RAI’s independence has always been an issue of debate.

But the arrival in power of Meloni — leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, who formed a coalition with Matteo Salvini’s far-right League party and the late Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing Forza Italia — redoubled concerns.

Tensions erupted at the weekend amid accusations RAI censored a speech by a leading writer criticising Meloni ahead of Liberation Day on April 25, when Italians mark the defeat of Fascism and the Nazis at the end of World War II.

Both RAI’s management and Meloni have denied censorship, and the premier posted the text of the monologue on her social media.

In another twist, Albania’s premier confirmed Thursday he called senior RAI editor Paolo Corsini about an TV report on Sunday into Italy’s plans to build two migration processing centres on Albanian territory.

Rama told La Stampa newspaper the report was “biased” and contained “lies” — adding that he had not raised the issue with Meloni.

The “Report” programme claimed the costs of migrant centres, which are under construction, were already “out of control” and raised questions about criminals benefiting from the project.