Outgoing Democratic Party (PD) leader Enrico Letta told a meeting of the centre-left group’s directorate on Thursday that he will not stick around, as he wants to make way for a new generation to take the helm of the party as soon as possible.
Ex-premier Letta announced that he would stay in charge until the party holds a congress and elects a new leader after its disappointing showing in last month’s general election, when it got around 19 per cent of the vote.
The centre-left alliance that the PD headed was soundly beaten by the right coalition spearheaded by Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli D’Italia (FdI) party.
“I thank those who have asked me to undertake a long-term commitment (to be leader) but I think it would by a mistake for you and the party,” Letta said.
“I started my political activism when I was young and I was a minister in 1998.
It’s right that our party fields a younger class of politicians capable of challenging the government of Giorgia Meloni, a young woman”.
Letta said Meloni was “already in trouble” as she works on preparing her government team and warned that “the honeymoon won’t go on forever”.
He also said that he thinks the renewed PD should stick with its existing symbol, saying it represents the party’s “service to Italy”.
He said the relatively low number of women elected to the new parliament was a failure for the system of representation.
He proposed the PD naming women whips in the Senate and Lower House.
“We’ll have the country’s first woman premier from the other side and, at the stage of proceedings, we have to be credible,” Letta said.
