In Cosenza the center-left continues to look at itself in the mirror without recognizing itself. Tensions boil in the bowels of broad-based parties, where political evaluations cross the minefield of vetoes and suspicions that often translate into internal score-settling. The Cosenza progressive laboratory, rather than regenerating itself, still seems to be grappling with the rubble of parties forced to observe the usual liturgies of discord that fuel bewilderment and discontent.
The Democratic Party is historically shaken by irreparable fractures with caciques and currents. The latest outbreaks of rebellion, ignited inside Palazzo dei Bruzi, with the tearing up of some councilors elected on the Dem lists and the birth of an autonomous group, have forced an intervention in Rome that can no longer be postponed. Among the protagonists of the fracture there is also the president of the municipal council Giuseppe Mazzuca. It is impossible in these conditions to give a unitary orientation to the provincial Federation condemned to a new season of commissionership.
The announcement came from Igor Taruffi, Dem national organizational manager, who photographed a situation that is difficult to sustain: «The Federation has been without a secretary for more than two months and in complete contrast with the statutory rules of the Democratic Party, more than a year after the last provincial congress, it is still without a Guarantee Commission». But it is not just a statutory issue. For Taruffi, the organizational paralysis and the fracture that exploded in the City Council represent “a line beyond which it is truly no longer possible to go”.
The commissioner, therefore, arrives when the party needs a political recomposition and instead risks becoming the certificate of a fracture that has never been healed. It remains to be seen whether Rome will be able to rebuild a common perimeter or whether the commissionership will end up freezing, only temporarily, a war that has historical roots.
But the regurgitations do not only concern the Democratic Party. The entire center-left of Cosenza seems to be going through an internal competition to establish who has the right to stand on the left. The Green-Left Alliance’s attack on the administration led by Franz Caruso has opened another front, forcing the PSI to intervene to defend the mayor and, above all, to prevent the conflict between allies from becoming an irreversible fault line.
The Socialist Provincial Political Coordination chooses clear tones: «Cosenza does not need summary trials or personal showdowns. It needs politics, discussion, ideas and the ability to deal with facts.” A reply that directly affects the claim, attributed to Avs, to delimit the progressive field: “No one can claim a monopoly on the left.”
The PSI thus claims Caruso’s administrative experience, recalling the environment, university, mobility, healthcare and urban regeneration. And he puts the numbers of green policy on the table, from the almost three thousand trees planted since 2021 to the new operation in via Isonzo, up to the Green Master Plan. But the political point is another: defending the mayor means, in the socialist reading, preserving one of the barriers of the center-left against the return of the right. The jab at Avs comes precisely on this ground: «In an attempt to hit Franz Caruso you risk hitting the entire progressive camp». And again: «The real opponent is outside the center-left, not inside».
It is the old question of the broad field, which in Cosenza however takes on rougher contours: allies who contest each other, parties who claim primogeniture, administrators who defend their own space. The risk is that the dispute to establish who is truly progressive ends up consuming the very common ground on which the center-left should instead build its own alternative.
The PSI tries to close the game with a formula that is both a warning and a proposal: «Less hatred, more politics. Less positional wars and more responsibility.” Words that today sound like a call for a truce. But here it is necessary to understand whether in Cosenza all the tenants are really willing to stay in the big progressive house.
