The divisions between the conservative parties favor the progressives taking control of eight of the thirteen provincial capitals at stake
Just over two million people were called to the polls, but the second round of municipal elections held in Italy this Sunday was seen as a thermometer of political temperature in the country ahead of the general election to be held in the will take place in the first months of 2023. In a deal with polls marked by strong abstention (42% of voters voted), the Democratic Party (PD), the center-left’s main force, eventually captured eight of the 13 provincial capitals that voted on. At stake, between which lie cities like Verona, Parma, Piacenza, Monza, Alessandria and Catanzaro, some of which were ruled for decades by conservative mayors.
“It is an extraordinary result,” said Enrico Letta, leader of the PD, who believed that the success of these elections supports his idea of going to the polls in alliance with the centrist forces and especially with the 5 Star. Movement (M5E). The second round of the municipal elections came a few days after the implosion of this party with a cross-cutting ideology resulting from the split led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luigi Di Maio, after weeks of battles with the chairman of the party, Giuseppe Conte, due to the shipment of weapons to Ukraine, among other points of friction.
According to a poll published this Sunday by the newspaper ‘Il Sole 24 Ore’, the M5E led by Conte would retain 6.9% of the vote after the split with Di Maio. If the polls confirm this prediction, it would be an unprecedented debacle in Italy as the ‘anti-castes’ won the last general election, held in 2018, taking 32% of the vote. Di Maio, who now heads a parliamentary group made up of 60 senators and deputies, would instead get 4.7% of the vote if he chose to run in the next election with his new political creature, which he ‘Together for the future’.
The municipal elections also leave a lesson for the right-wing parties. Antonio Tajani, former President of the European Parliament and ‘number two’ of Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi’s political force, made it clear. “Where we are united, we win. Where we’re not, we eventually lose it,” said Tajani, citing the most obvious example of what happened in Verona, a city considered sociologically conservative where the center-right had controlled the city council for 15 years.
Mayor is now former football player Damiano Tommasi – former player of Roma and Levante, among others -, who surprisingly managed to get the most votes in the first round two weeks ago and who took advantage of the split in the last inning this Sunday. of the conservative vote between two different candidates. “We made a very serious mistake in Verona,” said Tajani, recognizing that it is difficult in this city to pick a single candidate from the three center-right parties: Brothers of Italy, the formation led by Giorgia Meloni, Matteo Salvini’s League and Forza Italy. In the first round, on the other hand, they managed to take over important regional capitals such as Genoa, Palermo and L’Aquila thanks to the fact that they presented themselves together. After Meloni overtakes Salvini as the preferred option for conservative voters, this bloc must find a new balance if it is to consolidate the success of next year’s general polls.
Source: La Verdad
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