And so ended yet another “electoral battle” between the Center-Right and Center-Left to elect the President of a Region. This time it was not a normal renewal of the Regional Council after the canonical 5 years of a regional legislature, but early elections in the Liguria Region due to the involvement of Giovanni Toti, the outgoing president, in an investigation by the judiciary which lasted 4 years of the queue arrived, coincidentally, at its conclusion just a few weeks before the vote for the European elections in June.
The evil ones, but not only the evil ones, immediately underlined the very strange and suspicious concomitance of the European elections with the sudden and unexpected epilogue of that investigation into Giovanni Toti. A long and exhausting investigation which from the first moment did not present any aspects of worrying recurrence of crimes, nor escape of the indicted subjects, nor danger of tampering with the evidence. Nothing!
Not even the subjects involved in this investigation (starting from Toti, passing through the entrepreneur and former president of Genoa Calcio, Aldo Spinelli) had the slightest inkling of the judicial cyclone that was about to hit them, the city of Genoa and its Ligurian institutions, despite 4 years of shadowing, wiretaps, photos of the suspects “stolen” by investigators everywhere and everything else possible in an investigation of this kind.
A sort of clockwork justice, well known and abused in our country since at least the early 90s, had been resurrected, revitalized and proposed again at the right time. That is, one month before important electoral appointments, with the far from hidden aim of “ballooning” the Center-Right through the sudden arrest of the ruddy president Toti and his “dangerous” entrepreneur friends.
We will spare you the controversies of the centre-right political forces who immediately shouted about the “coup d’état” of the judiciary (if only for the timing of the judges in the methods used in the investigation) and the opposing poisonous invectives of the left who shouted at their opponents that they were a band of corrupt and evildoers.
Accusations never answered even in the electoral campaign where the centre-right coalition presented the mayor of Genoa Marco Bucci in the role of candidate for the office of president of the Liguria Region, who distinguished himself in the Municipality of Genoa for his enlightened good governance and for the happy conclusion of the complex activities related to the reconstruction of the Morandi Bridge. Activities which the mayor had fulfilled, with zeal and competence, in the role given to him by the Government, as “Extraordinary Commissioner for the reconstruction of the Morandi Bridge” which, you will remember, crumbled in broad daylight, taking with it over 43 innocent victims.
The Centre-left, in turn, opposed in this electoral competition the former Minister of Labor Andrea Orlando, a native of La Spezia, with various experiences in Centre-left governments, from Letta (Environment) to Renzi and Gentiloni (Justice) ending with Mario Draghi who entrusted him with the Ministry of Labor.
A good candidate, there is no doubt, who in our opinion was influenced and penalized strongly by the verbal violence and the heated tones used by the candidates of the centre-left coalition, for the entire duration of the electoral campaign and even before, in the aftermath of the Toti’s arrest.
A harsh electoral campaign, the one conducted by the representatives of the left, where there was no interest or felt the need to discuss programs or projects for the Ligurian citizens. Rather, focusing its strategy of penetrating the electorate on the great opportunity granted by the Ligurian judiciary to easily demolish the opponent, due to the judicial affairs of the former centre-right president. A monotonous electoral campaign conducted by the left exclusively in these terms and with this single theme of strong contrast with the opponent, also for reasons internal to the coalition led by Schlein.
As we know, due to the 5 Star veto, Matteo Renzi’s political group was kept out of the coalition, judged to be incompatible with the policies of Conte’s party and with the same majority within the Democratic Party, largely oriented towards a strongly radical left. Majority within the Democratic Party which has never made a secret of the need for ever greater political collaboration with the 5 Stars, in contrast with Schlein’s continuous and obsessive declarations of strongly pursuing the abused and inclusive project of the “wide field”.
A very strong and all too “visible” contradiction in the eyes of Ligurian voters who interpreted the left’s message as an exclusive intention to defeat their political opponent. Without a shred of declared political project other than that of the “ethnic cleansing” of the ruling class of the parties of the centre-right coalition in Liguria.
A ruling class, the latter, which on the contrary had its own strong and recognizable political project which it was already concretely implementing with Toti’s regional council and whose positive results were effectively represented in terms of new employment; relaunch of the port activities of the capital and of the Ligurian port system; activation of naturalistic engineering interventions for the containment of repeated landslide phenomena in the fragile Ligurian territory and anything else urgent in terms of environmental recovery; streamlining the Ligurian public healthcare system and new hiring of medical and nursing staff in the region’s hospitals.
Political-administrative program blocked by judicial investigations, but re-proposed with greater vigor and effectiveness in the electoral round just concluded by the centre-right political forces that supported the new candidate for the presidency of the Liguria Region. A tested political program that was placed in the hands and in the stubborn will of a capable public administrator, Marco Bucci who had given countless proof of his administrative, political and managerial efficiency. These elements, in our opinion, produced the far from obvious result of the election of the former mayor of Genoa.
An unexpected result achieved in a climate strongly conditioned by external factors and “elements”, where it was extremely difficult to call Ligurian citizens to vote also due to the adverse weather conditions. An attempt was made to influence this result until the last hours of the electoral campaign through a RAI television program which, in full “electoral silence”, last Sunday evening distributed to the television audience hours of authentic “loose and packaged” poison against Bucci and his political coalition.
Starting from Toti and recalling the latter’s judicial misadventures, then launching a warning or, if you like, a “mafia-style” warning aimed at Ligurian voters about to freely express their vote in the regional elections.
How else could one interpret the political use of a television program on a public network broadcast between the first and second days scheduled for the vote, that is, in full swing of the electoral competition? This is the question we would like to ask the magistrates of Genoa to find out from them whether these events demonstrate any criminal offenses against those who decided to broadcast those television reports on that precise day of opening of the polling stations. So much in contrast with the most basic and well-known legal provisions on the matter.
A question that we would also like to ask the Minister of the Interior for the possible obligations falling within his specific competence. In the meantime, let’s carry on like this, hoping that politics knows and wants to express authentic content, open and fair debates and discussions, mutual respect between party leaders and beyond, quality of the political proposal and of the ruling class of the individual parties.
