The Italian Democratic Party finds its anti-Meloni leader in the young feminist Elly Schlein

Elly Schlein, deputy and former vice-president of Emilia-Romagna (centre), won the primaries of the Democratic Party (PD), Italy’s main centre-left force. Many analysts believed that the winner of Sunday’s vote would be Stefano Bonaccini, president of Emilie-Romagne, highly respected among businessmen and the leadership of the PD. However, in the end, the vote of young people, women and activists concerned about environmental issues and inequality made Schlein’s victory possible. On Sunday evening at eleven o’clock, after 80% of the votes were counted, the victory of the representative was already clear: 53.8% compared to 46.2% won by her opponent.

After Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister and leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, currently first in the polls, another woman came to the head of the largest opposition party, the second by the number of votes in the regional elections in the last two weeks. ago.

Elena Ethel (Elly) Schlein is an atypical politician by Italian standards: born in 1985, the daughter of an American academic of Jewish origin and an Italian professor, she is bisexual and lives with a woman. She participated as a volunteer in the pre-election campaign of Democrat Barack Obama and, thanks to the enthusiastic support of many young people from the cities of Emilia-Romagna, she was elected as a member of the European Parliament in 2014, regional vice-president in 2020 and deputy in Rome in 2014, the last general election in September.

Unlike her opponent Bonaccini and the last secretary of the PD, the Catholic Enrico Letta, Schlein is a defender of the rights of LGTBI people and gender equality and advocates more investment in public health and environmental care. Compared to many PD barons, she is casual and sassy, ​​and many voters directly call her Elly. Carla, an employee in Milan, believes: “PD has been thinking only about power for a long time and goes beyond human rights. I think things can change with Elly.”

In his post-victory speech, Schlein defined the vote of confidence in him as “a clear mandate for real change […] with a focus on the fight against all forms of inequality, the fight against precarity […] and urgently address the climate crisis.”

His the elections scared many PD barons. Some are already talking about the danger of a split, with the most centrist wing ready to oppose the new secretary and leave the party to form a new centrist force with other moderates.