What was said to the Federal Council of Salvini’s League
Moves, moods and announcements of Lega and Forza Italia. Paola Sacchi's note
Yesterday's Federal Council ends with the League squaring around the leader. Matteo Salvini himself, after the fateful days of Colle, which led him to media overexposure, at the center of a sort of external, media and allied "process", invites, as Agi reports , executives, ministers , governors to "put their face", get out of the shadows. Because the strategies, according to the League, "here have often been more shared than what appeared outside". As for the choices for the Quirinale, the highest governing body of Via Bellerio recognizes the leader "the courage" he had with the decision for the Mattarella bis. Salvini tells his family that he took it by himself because there were now a few minutes to do it.
Now for the party the watchword is "to preserve" its leader and to render "the image of a League that plays with all its orchestra". Salvini is acknowledged having stopped the Forza Italia operation and a part of the minor allies with Pier Ferdinando Casini to prevent the risk of subsequent centrist and proportionalist operations and, on the other hand, to have avoided operations "tending to impallinarlo by Brothers of Italy". Therefore, the League approves: the Mattarella bis was the only choice to make.
Giancarlo Giorgetti's resignation rumored by the gossip of Transatlantico on Saturday evening is not even mentioned for a moment. The decision to continue on the path of the Draghi government is confirmed. Even if, as the Minister for Economic Development warns, everything will now be more difficult because we are entering a pre-election phase. Therefore, it is better to focus on the choices most at the center of the party agenda. And the highest Northern League's governing body unanimously approves Salvini's proposals, starting with those for the government. No to new house taxes and land registry reform; no to new restrictions and – on the subject of Dad at school – no differentiation between vaccinated and unvaccinated children; yes to an urgent decree to help families and businesses with the payment of electricity and gas bills; yes to a more concrete commitment to the defense of borders and the fight against illegal immigration.
As for the future structures of the center-right that emerged split from the quirinal election, after Giorgia Meloni's hard no to Mattarella bis – a no after which she intends to re-establish the center-right "by allying myself with the Italians who must find representation" – Salvini says he is "optimistic". “We will rebuild it, I don't want to exclude anyone”. And yet the proposal of the US "Republicans" model and the conversation held last Monday in Arcore with Silvio Berlusconi, from which a glimmer emerges, however, is only mentioned. It is limited to the conclusion that "the Federal Council is given full trust and a mandate to the secretary to work to create, expand and strengthen an alternative alliance to the left". The wait prevails, while you square around the party and the leader. Forza Italia with its number two Antonio Tajani and the vice president of the group in the Senate, Arcore's chief of staff, Licia Ronzulli, recall that this was the same project by Berlusconi, as Cav himself would have said to Salvini. But now "no to cold castings".
Maurizio Gasparri, on the other hand, recalls the "inadequate choices made by FdI such as the one for Rome that we had to share out of a sense of responsibility". And the Minister of Public Administration Renato Brunetta: "Salvini is welcome if he agrees to join the EPP". The objective of the center-right Federation on the model of the US Republicans proposed by the leader of the League collides with a Forza Italia and the Cav determined to redo the "center" in the quasi-ex-coalition. Not in the proportional sense, so far, but to reconstitute that political center made by Berlusconi. With the novelty, however, of overtaking in the 2018 elections and in the European and Regional League on what had always been the center of gravity of the center-right. That overtaking that led to unresolved nodes in the leadership, opening up to internal competition, nodes that have now come to a head with the Corsa al Colle that has just ended.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/consiglio-federale-lega/ on Wed, 02 Feb 2022 06:41:49 +0000.