No buck-passing after centre-left defeat -Letta spokesperson

(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 30 - A spokesperson for former Democratic Party (PD) secretary Enrico Letta warned against passing the buck after the centre-left suffered heavy losses in mayoral run-offs on Monday.
    "No playing the blame game, please," wrote Monica Nardi on Twitter.
    "Enrico Letta triumphed in local elections for two years in a row", in 2021 and 2022, "before losing badly in the general election" in 2022, she continued.
    But he didn't look for alibis and he never took a shot at anyone in the PD," Nardi said.
    The comment came after members of the party said in interviews on Tuesday that the mayoral candidates and electoral lists had been decided by the former party management, before Elly Schlein took over from Letta as secretary in March.
    On Monday Elly Schlein said the centre left's run-off victory in only one of seven provincial capitals and its poor showing in separate first-round elections in Sicily had been a a "clear" defeat and showed that the headwinds that had blown the right to victory in last September's general election were still strong.
    "It is evident that you can't win on your own," she added, stressing the need to build alliances on the centre left with the populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) led by ex premier Giuseppe Conte or the so-called Third Pole, which at the moment are mutually exclusive and with the latter saying Schlein is too far to the left.
    On Tuesday Conte told reporters at the Lower House that the M5S was "willing to dialogue with the PD" on "issues and projects", "measuring ourselves on concrete responses to the needs of local and national communities".
    However, this should not compromise or water down the party's battles, he added.
    "I am convinced that Meloni is not to be fought with broad alliances but with a different idea of the country," Conte said.
    (ANSA).