Reggio Emilia, September 13, 2026 – “We who started against broad agreements, make a commitment: we will go to government only by winning the elections with the progressive alliance. No more agreements behind backs. The leader of the PD Elly Schlein sounds the charge, welcomed by a triumph of flags in the wind, a crowd of almost 5000 people applauding and singing her name for the last event of the Festa dell’Unità di Reggio Emilia at the Iren Green Park arena.
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“We try every day to be up to your needs and your dreams. The number of festivals has grown in recent years, showing our desire to be a community,” Schlein began. “We are stubbornly united, because you ask us to be, you who deserve an alternative after the failure of Giorgia Meloni. Great challenges await us in the coming months, we will face them together,” she said, claiming the work done after the defeat in the last general elections.
“After the 2022 elections the center-left forces no longer spoke to each other. We believed in it when no one else did. We brought the party back where its people expect it, we patiently mended the broken relationships. We practice unity every day in the interest of this country. We are a great popular collective force, not populist.” She attacked Meloni and her “needlessly long government,” which celebrated its longevity record in Bari, “the self-celebration of those who, having no results to claim, cling to dates. They had the numbers in parliament to do everything and did not improve anything in the lives of Italians,” while on voting she states that “we are ready at any moment. It is Meloni who must say when she will bring us to elections. The sooner, the better for the country.” She addressed the issue of the electoral law, wondering “Why, if they boast of all this stability, do they insist on wanting to change the electoral law that made them win? The answer is that they are afraid of us. We are the novelty. We will stop the center-right as in the justice referendum.”
Then the passage on the electoral program, from the “battle for the minimum wage for all those workers who are poor, despite having a job” to immigration on which “all the propaganda and failure of the Meloni government has been consumed,” up to the conflict in Ukraine, on which the secretary declared that “we will continue to support the people unjustly invaded by Putin’s offensive. We have asked Europe for a diplomatic effort. I think the EU must have a unified foreign policy, representing all 27 States.”
She then focused on the program and the primary issue on which she expressed confidence. “First the program, then decide with the allies: either the agreement or the primaries, but if we hold them we will win those primaries together. We have no fear of the vote, because we are the PD,” she said, also removing a few stones from her shoe. “There are those who do not want a left-wing woman at Palazzo Chigi. They bet I wouldn’t last even 6 months as secretary, instead I am for the fourth time at the closing of the Festa dell’Unità.” Finally, a promise to voters: “We will never again give the right a gift by dividing ourselves. I am here, let’s go win with the progressive alliance, let’s go change Italy.”
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