Who will win between Beppe Sala and Gabriele Albertini in Milan?
Profiles and potential of Beppe Sale and Gabriele Albertini in the municipal elections in Milan. The notebook of Walter Galbusera, president of the Anna Kuliscioff Foundation
A short time ago, the mayor of Milan Beppe Sala announced in an interview with Repubblica his adhesion to the European Greens. Although considered very close to the Democratic Party, he was enlisted by Matteo Renzi after his results as CEO of Expo 2015 in Milan, but Sala never joined the party. This was not a big problem nor did it prevent gossip from enlisting him, before the choice fell on Enrico Letta , as one of the potential new leaders of the Democratic Party or with positions in the Nazarene, as a minister or as the head of a large public company. However, Sala has never personally exposed himself, limiting himself to a generic "we'll see …".
Sala, the undisputed candidate for mayor in the elections of Palazzo Marino with a profile of a respectable administrator, has never built his own political aggregation in the Democratic Party nor has he cultivated close relationships with a national leader, preferring to maintain a discreet profile of autonomy which, if it left room for movement, it weakened its "Roman" role. It is certainly likely that his "green" political choice is attributed as pulling himself out of a party that on the one hand did not pay him much attention and on the other ran the risk of being more and more uncomfortable for him and crowded with too many currents (as per he declared) in which he struggled to fully recognize himself.
Its adherence to the greens of Europe has aroused attention and perhaps some questions but has not provoked any explicit negative reaction from the Democratic Party either in Milan or in Rome. Somehow they expected it but did not consider it a catastrophic event as the mayor's decision not to run again would have been, which would have reopened a very complicated game and restored space and hopes to a center-right that was struggling (and struggling) to identify a credible candidate.
After all, Beppe Sala has never made a party life in the Democratic Party, dropping the numerous invitations received to participate in party meetings. And, in any case, he remains the Nazarene's candidate in the autumn elections for Palazzo Marino. After all, the position of Sala among the Greens could strengthen its role in the ecological-environmental-digital match by mobilizing huge resources that become strategic in a metropolitan city like Milan and making a strong contribution to the recovery of the economy of the whole country.
However, something significant has happened in the last few days with the emergence of the candidacy for mayor of Gabriele Albertini, former tenant of Palazzo Marino from 1997 to 2006, initially hypothesized (and surprisingly) by Corriere della Sera and personally endorsed by Matteo Salvini. . In Albertini's second mandate, the League had entered in the majority but there had never been excellent relations between the two. Today, at least for Salvini, the old disagreements are legacies of the past that no longer have a reason to exist and the new candidacy of Albertini, who has always kept a certain understatement (to the point of defining himself as the administrator of a large condominium, which did not harm to its popularity), it would be a great idea. And not only because he would represent a well-known and recognizable figure from an electorate like the Milanese one that gave him great support in the past but above all because he is certainly not identifiable as a "man of the League" which, moreover, when he emphasized sovereign positions, he did not never achieved great electoral results in a metropolis which, due to its history, has a reformist vocation of “doing” and feels integrated into a European reality which, if anything, it would like to accelerate its integration.
The convergence on Albertini by Forza Italia and the Brothers of Italy, as well as other moderate forces, is more than natural. The polls made would have confirmed good prospects for the former mayor in a hypothetical electoral duel with Sala who in the meantime has presented his civic list and intends to "build the next ruling class of the city". Gabriele Albertini, however, has remained silent until now. Perhaps to reflect well on a candidacy which, in addition to the possible satisfaction of reopening a game that seemed now closed with a triumphal march from Sala, would involve, in the event of victory, very heavy commitments, which he knows well for having diligently played the role in past, and which would deprive him of that privacy which he also appreciates very much. Or perhaps it waits to know the real intentions of all the partners in order to set specific conditions.
In any case, Repubblica moved forward by presenting it, alongside Bassolino, as a "heated soup", a gerontocratic symbol of the unstoppable decadence of today's political offer of a police station system from the Draghi government. Albertini (born in 1950) is warned.
For the rest, who will live will see, even Sala has thought about it for a while before reapplying.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/chi-vincera-fra-beppe-sala-e-gabriele-albertini-a-milano/ on Tue, 20 Apr 2021 04:52:28 +0000.