The Italian left was already in bad shape. “Qatargate”, a corruption affair in the European Parliament at the heart of which is a former Italian socialist MEP, adds a new crisis to the multiple difficulties faced by a political family already plunged into existential doubts by the results of the September elections.
Pier Antonio Panzeri, a figure of the Lombard left, had been at the head of the Milan branch of the Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL) before being elected for three consecutive terms. in the European Parliament, the last two under the label of the Democratic Party (PD). Detained since December 9, he is suspected by Belgian investigators of being the pivot of a corruption network fueled by Qatar and Morocco and with which several Italian nationals from Brussels are associated. If the scandal is primarily a European issue and Mr. Panzeri has long since distanced himself from the Italian authorities, his involvement in such a serious affair has plunged the representatives of his original political universe into disarray.
“Mr. Panzeri comes from our world, that of the defense of workers and the Italian left. This case has a harsh impact on our image”regret Sergio Cofferati, former secretary general of the CGIL and former PD MEP. Ever since “Qatargate” broke out, newspapers linked to the progressive camp have focused on a major motif in Italian political culture, a four-decade-old totem of the transalpine left that has since returned to center stage: “The Moral Question. » The term is borrowed from an interview given on a daily basis La Repubblica in 1981 by Enrico Berlinguer, then Secretary General of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), and still serves as a compass for the center left. It designates the duty for the left to mark its ” difference “ by refusing to indulge in the supposed racketeering of his political adversaries.
“Kind of curse”
Forty years later, the world of Berlinguer, who died in 1984, has long since disappeared, but this reference to the moral question resurfaced after “Qatargate”. It leaves elected officials, intellectuals and left-wing journalists helpless, already disoriented by the coming to power of the government of Giorgia Meloni, the most right-wing in Republican history. “For questions of communication, the left had put its supposed morality at the heart of its speech, indexing its credibility on this idea”, recalls Mr. Cofferati.
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