The guaranteed evolutions of the Salvini League
Paola Sacchi's note
The election of Umberto Bossi to the Chamber, who in the end makes it, with a surprise twist, after Roberto Calderoli discovers "the crab taken from the Viminale", brings back a bit of serenity in the League, together with the "repechage" of the treasurer Giulio Centemero.
Matteo Salvini, who had decided to re-nominate the founder of the Northern League, as a tribute to his origins, to the "man without whom we would not be here", rejoices. But he also removes a few pebbles from his shoes: “How many words to the wind…”. The reference to further internal controversies, after the not exciting electoral result, on the non-election given for certain the other night even of the "founding father" is evident.
The League has squared around the leader, for whom the "weighty" entry that the Federal Council had asked for precisely to give stability to the majority itself is now looming in the future government led by the FdI. It is not known whether it will be the Ministry of the Interior on which Salvini, who yesterday met with Giorgia Meloni, does not seem to want to give up for the League more than for himself.
But, however it will go, it was not wonderful, the spectacle of hidden controversies coming from inside the party, which now remains decisive, together with Forza Italia, for the formation of the executive probably of Meloni premier. The chronicles write controversy on the part of that so-called governist wing, with the governors in the lead, which had really pushed Salvini to join the Draghi government. What the League paid the price for above all in terms of consensus, having found itself ruling with the Democratic Party and the Five Stars and with ministers such as Roberto Speranza (Health) and Luciana Lamorgese (Internal), whose respective policies – of very hard lockdown and management of illegal immigration with a significant increase in landings that Salvini himself had drastically reduced, which also cost him a surreal process still in progress – they were poison for entrepreneurs and for the Northern League electorate in general.
But above all the spectacle of the controversy and requests for resignation, even through the newspaper, coming from the so-called "old guard" is not nice. As Indro Montanelli said, “time always gilds everything”. But Salvini's National League saved the party from the 3-4 percent abyss. And, although certainly with contradictions and errors, even inevitable in such an undertaking, Salvini has given a new face to the party, modernizing it, introducing new cultures and figures. Above all like the culture of that guarantor for which, despite intuitive openings of the genius of Bossi, the Northern League's ruling class had not yet particularly shone.
Unfortunately, bad episodes are part of the Northern League's history, such as that yes to prison for the deputy of the then Pdl Alfonso Papa. The Senatùr in his last weeks of secretariat tried to oppose, as did the Forza Italia guarantor, but Roberto Maroni and his men were inflexible. Salvini deserves all the credit for having courageously repositioned the party on a liberal and guarantee profile, to the point of recognizing, precisely in an interview for Startmag , the political merits of Bettino Craxi.
The "captain", in the avalanche of signatures collected at the Northern League's banquets with the Radicals for the referendum on justice, approached personalities who had never before participated in the initiatives of the League. If the Lega is no longer the party of the noose, which Bossi himself – an episode not very well known – contested in Orsenigo, the merit is all of Salvini's courage. Which today will bring together its approximately 100 parliamentarians from which it intends to start again.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/lega-salvini-garantismo/ on Thu, 29 Sep 2022 06:21:02 +0000.