All the challenges of the center-right
How the center-right parties will move after the defeat in Rome and Turin. Paola Sacchi's note
The watchword of the mainstream media was immediately hot: they lost the "populists", the "sovereignists", in short, the ugly, dirty and bad ones, cheers, back to normal.
Easy. Predictable. The left certainly won, more precisely the Democratic Party, starting with the clear affirmation in Rome of Roberto Gualtieri, in the Piddina geography more than the leader Enrico Letta close to the Lazio president Nicola Zingaretti and therefore to all the powerful machine run for years in the centers real power also cultural by Goffredo Bettini, or the inventor of all the mayors of the left capital.
The fact remains that the victory of the Democratic Party is confirmed on a restricted basis, just over 40 percent of voters, with particular intensity of influxes, as usual, in the Ztl, in neighborhoods such as Parioli. In the suburbs they stay at home. But a victory is always a victory, especially in the capital.
In general, the left wins all over Italy with center-right or Five Star voters left at home. The victory above all by Piddina is a bit incomplete and reminds us of the '93 elections. As Bettini himself reiterated in a recent interview, the big cities are historically of the left. And the big cities, where there are the real centers of power, went to the ballot, except Trieste, were already all governed precisely by the Democratic Party, the other left and the allies of the Five Stars.
However, the municipalities, as important as they are, are not the policies, it is equally true, however, that it does not pull a good air for the center-right. It was not a good performance, starting with the Roman one.
The center-right was certainly massacred on the media level, certainly crushed in the image by the demonstration in Rome last Saturday of the unions, starting with the CGIL, which, with all the new rising Olive, Pd and Cinque Stelle, but without the so-called center, it seemed like a sort of political dress rehearsal. A demonstration that has effectively broken the electoral silence.
However, all this cannot hide the fact that in recent times more than a coalition the center-right has appeared a competition (all internal) which has led to the identification, as the numbers say,
candidates, albeit valuable in their professions, wrong, a little unknown and this as a result of grueling negotiations that have confused the voters.
But above all, the image of a center-right that is only apparently united was given, where everyone basically went on their own.
It would be unfair and ungenerous to attribute to the leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, the defeat, with about twenty points below, by Enrico Michetti, which she particularly wanted. But it is equally true that continuing to talk about the first parties of the coalition perhaps does not help the profound reflection that the center-right needs.
FdI certainly had a good success at this round of Municipalities, as did the Lega alle Politiche 2018, when it became the first party in the coalition with almost 18 percent and then to the Europeans going over 30 percent and to the Regionals. And still according to some polls the League remains the first party and according to others it is FdI. However, both parties beat 20 percent.
Forza Italia achieved a good result, albeit torn more laboriously than expected, in Trieste with the confirmation of the mayor Dipiazza and the excellent success of the president of Calabria Roberto Occhiuto. He also had a good result in Olbia and in other realities. But in Roma Fi it is under the Lega, which is over 6 as the second party, which also suffered heavy losses, after Fdi at over 17 percent, according to data up to last night. And in Milan FI is at 7.3 per cent after the over 21 of the municipalities of 5 years ago.
The populists, sovereigns, ugly, dirty and bad, according to the numbers, therefore constitute the largest part of the coalition. It will now be said and said in all sorts of ways that only with so-called moderation can we win, but the paradox is that moderation is invoked without real numbers in the country.
While the political point is the representation of those classes left at home, that impoverished middle class, the most popular strata of the suburbs or that same productive middle bourgeoisie, not sheltered by the state, of professionals, entrepreneurs of the private sector who, for example, two years ago in the small but symbolic Umbria, because the real red fort for 60 years – more historically red than that remains Emilia-Romagna – awarded the Lega di Matteo Salvini, the driving force of the center-right.
These social strata throughout Italy are asking for less taxes, work, de-bureaucratization, justice reform, controlled and selected immigration. It is best distributed in Europe. Less citizenship income, reform of the procurement code.
The challenge is this. And certainly it is on this that from now on the center-right of government and opposition will have to put more emphasis. The alternative is a coalition-competition ready to be definitively disjointed with the return to a true proportional.
Perhaps with in the background the hypothesis, caressed by sectors on the left, of a Draghi bis.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/tutte-le-sfide-del-centrodestra/ on Tue, 19 Oct 2021 06:28:12 +0000.