Home » The administrative challenge rewards the center-left – Michael Braun

The administrative challenge rewards the center-left – Michael Braun

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Milan, Bologna, Naples: it was a one-two (and three) boxing blow from the center-left to the right in the municipal elections. The Democratic Party and its allies have not only won: they have swept with percentages around 60 per cent in the three big cities while for the right there has been no match.

And as if that weren’t enough, the center-left candidates also have a good chance of winning in the second round in Turin and Rome. Against the forecasts of the pollsters, Stefano Lo Russo finished first in Turin with almost 44 percent, trailing his opponent on the right by five percentage points. And in Rome Roberto Gualtieri is three points behind Enrico Michetti, but has a much better chance of getting votes from the voters of Carlo Calenda and Virginia Raggi in the second round.

The “5 to 0” feared by Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni is thus outlined, and there is little to console with the clear advantage of the right in Trieste and the victory achieved without difficulty in the regional in Calabria. The interpretation of this electoral round that sees a clear winner, the Democratic Party and its allies, and two defeated, the right and the 5-star movement does not pose great difficulties.

Lacks and rivalries
The Democratic Party comes out strengthened, especially its leader who, against the resistance of many post-Renzians (see the primary in Bologna), has staked his cards on an enlarged center-left, where possible also the five stars, in his opinion the only way to be competitive with the right. Enrico Letta emerges strengthened not least thanks to his personal clear affirmation in the supplementary elections for the chamber in the Siena college.

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Instead, the right-hand side appears battered, a victim of the increasingly heated rivalry between Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni. According to Salvini, the candidates were chosen “too late”, but more than anything else, thanks also to multiple cross vetoes, they were weak candidates if not a joke like Enrico Michetti in Rome, champion in escaping from all or almost all comparisons with his opponents , or like the gunslinger Luca Bernardo in Milan. But those choices denote a more structural problem than the right: the lack of a serious and prepared political class in many territorial realities, a lack for which, for example, Rome had already paid a heavy price in the days of the mayor Gianni Alemanno.

It is the same lack accused by the cinquestelle. The cities triumphantly conquered in 2016 with Virginia Raggi and Chiara Appendino undergo two defeats in Rome and Turin. Raggi – who five years ago had 35 per cent in the first round and 67 per cent in the second round – now comes only fourth with a skimpy 19 per cent. Instead Appendino did not reappear; the candidate taking over from her has to be content with a humiliating 9 percent.

The M5s not only pays for the deficiencies shown to the government, but also the fact that its roots instead of growing have been reduced to a flicker: in Rome during the electoral campaign, unlike five years ago, it was very difficult to meet gazebos and activists of the movement.

Return to bipolarism
This vote places the tombstone on all the ambitions of the M5s to present itself as a “third pole”, neither on the right nor on the left: as such it would disappear. Giuseppe Conte has drawn the conclusions: he wants to carry on both the territorial roots and the positioning of the cinquestelle in the field that he himself calls progressive. And even Luigi Di Maio, still very skeptical two years ago about the formation of the Conte II government with a yellow-red coalition, now sees that alliance as “structural”.

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Italy is therefore preparing to return to bipolarity between the center-left extended to the M5s and the right. Within the right, the great loser is undoubtedly Salvini, in the south often downgraded by the troops of Giorgia Meloni, but also in the north who came out with disappointing results. That fact can only exacerbate the rivalries between the Lega and the Brothers of Italy (FdI) as well as the internal conflicts within the League between the “governist” and the radically populist wing.

Equally it would be wrong to draw hasty conclusions for national scenarios. In fact, the defeat of the right is not due to significant movements of its constituents, but to the simple fact that many of them have simply stayed at home: the turnout has dropped sharply. On the other hand, nothing tells us that in the next political elections it should go the same way. At the national level, the populist right-wing formations have maintained an unaltered strength for two years now; adding together the Lega and FdI we always arrive at 40 percent, the entire center-right totals 50 percent.

So the center-left can rejoice at having clearly won this stage, but from here to celebrate this success as a “historic” – as Letta did – he runs. The progressive field would be very wrong if it underestimated the real future challenge, not the one with Michetti and Bernardo but with Meloni and Salvini.

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