Conte: “We will have a program by September, and we will be a team in the primaries”

Giuseppe Conte wants the center-left coalition to enter its primaries as a team, not as a collection of rivals calculating how much support each party can add. Speaking at the Festa dell’Unità in Bologna, the Five Star Movement leader said, “All participants must be bound to the program, a solid and cohesive program.”

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All participants must be bound to the program, a solid and cohesive program.

Conte said primaries could help prevent the coalition from splitting after the vote. In his formulation, the candidate who loses would not become a loser, while the winner would lead the coalition rather than an individual party. That, he argued, would make it more difficult to bring down the coalition leader.

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When I hear people say, look, we just need to put one percent here or 0.3 percent there, I say that does not work.

He rejected the idea that the alliance could be built by simply adding small percentages of support. “When I hear people say, look, we just need to put one percent here or 0.3 percent there, I say that does not work,” Conte said. He called instead for a program of change supported by reliable partners, followed by an effort to win.

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For me, there is only one thing: changing the country, and we can do it together.

Asked what could hold the alliance together, Conte gave a single answer: “For me, there is only one thing: changing the country, and we can do it together.” He said meetings to prepare a genuinely progressive program would begin at the end of September, after which the coalition would decide together on the primaries.

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At the end of September we will begin meeting to work on a genuinely progressive program, and immediately afterward we will decide together on the primaries.