PD OKs candidates for general election

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 16 - The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) on Tuesday approved its lists of candidates for the September 25 general election.
    The PD is leading an alliance with the leftwing Italian Left (SI) party, the ecologist Green Europe (EV) party and the More Europe (+E) party.
    The coalition is currently lagging far behind in opinion polls to a centre-right bloc led by hard right Brothers of Italy (FdI) leader Giorgia Melojni, who is projected to be Italy's first woman and first post-fascist premier.
    PD leader and former premier Enrico Letta will head the party lists for the Lower House in Lombardy and Veneto.
    Centrist vote catcher Carlo Cottarelli, a former International Monetary Fund official, will be the PD list head for the Senate in Milan.
    Microbiologist Andrea Crisanti will spearhead the PD ticket in Europe.
    Senator Monica Cirinnà, who gained popularity with a law approving civil unions in Italy, pulled her candidacy saying she had been offered a "losing seat".
    Former sports minister Luca Lotti was excluded form the lists and accused the PD leadership of "hiding behind cowardly excuses".
    LOtti has long been close to former PD leader and ex-premier Matteo Renzi, who split from the PD to form his own centrist party Italia Viva (IV).
    IV, the centrist Azione party of former industry minister Carlo Calenda and a couple of other tiny centrist parties, are running as a 'third pole' of Italian politics on September 25.
    The FdI is running alongside the nationalist League party of former anti-migrant interior minister Matteo Salvini and the centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party of former three-time prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi.
    The right/centre-right alliance is currently projected to get more than 45% of the vote and win clear and easy majorities in both houses of parliament.
    That would probably propel the 45-year-old Meloni into the premiership as FdI are polling at around 24% with the League on 12.5% and FI on 8%.
    Meloni last week disavowed Fascism and its "ignominious" racist laws in a video to the foreign press.
    She said her party, whose European allies include Hungarian rightist premier Viktor Orban, Poland's national-conservative Law and Justice party and Spain's post-Francoist Vox, shares values with Britain's Conservatives, America's Republicans and Likud in Israel.
    Letta then gave the foreign press a video message in the same three languages as Meloni, English, French and Spanish, and accused her of "hiding the truth". (ANSA).