Jole Santelli: respectable, loyal and generous
Francesco Damato remembers Jole Santelli
For once, surprisingly, after decades of barbarism, out of mind words and gestures, politics has lived up to humanity which should always inspire and characterize it. The consternation was really great, and of every political party, for the sudden death , at the age of 52, of Jole Santelli. That less than ten months ago she was elected president of her region, Calabria, winning the penultimate battle of her life, short but intense, and for years marked by an illness that she had been able to face with her usual energy and confidence. A very decent, loyal and generous person is gone.
Of socialist origins, always participating in all the occasions and initiatives of memory and celebration of Giacomo Mancini, just over twenty years old saw in the Forza Italia founded by Silvio Berlusconi the best political and electoral refuge for the orphans of the heart party overwhelmed by the judicial storm policy of 1992/93: the PSI. And he remained faithful to Berlusconi in good and bad political fortunes, in the years of government and in those of opposition, in the successes and in the defeats, in the happy initiatives and in the mistakes, which certainly did not fail to reduce Forza Italia to its current dimensions. That did not, however, prevent Jole Santelli from succeeding in the regional elections last January, in a region – hers – where Berlusconi's party managed directly or indirectly, with linked lists, to get close to 30 percent of the votes.
Several times parliamentarian and undersecretary in the governments of Berlusconi himself and Enrico Letta, Santelli won almost 450,000 votes in the Calabrian regional elections at the head of the center-right coalition, equal to 55.29 per cent, distancing the most direct competitor by 25 points: Filippo Callipo, of the center left.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/jole-santelli-perbene-leale-e-generosa/ on Thu, 15 Oct 2020 04:56:21 +0000.