Elections in Milan, Mayor Beppe Sala does an encore in the first round. “I challenge anyone to get a better result in 15 days of electoral campaign“said the candidate for mayor of the center-right in Milan, Luca Bernardo, at a press conference in Milan at the Nhow Hotel in via Tortona. Dressed in a blue suit, light blue shirt and red tie, Bernardo was greeted by applause from supporters and candidates of the his list present in the room, who on his arrival shouted ‘Luca, Luca!’ “I was a stranger, we started in early August, this is the time we worked 15 days, maybe 17 no more”, he added. “We left our mark in Milan but I think the real winner today is only one: abstention”. “You see me with a smile, as you know I am a man of the public – added Bernardo – We needed more time. Then maybe things could have gone differently “.
“I have decided that I will stay in the Municipality, while continuing to be a doctor. You will see me enter Palazzo Marino, it is certain that the adventure does not end here. It is not the end but the beginning of a beautiful and great story “.” I will support and help the Milanese citizens who have wanted to believe in our history – remarked Bernardo -. We have to carry on the seed we planted, we have to grow a strong, robust plant. “
The Morisi and Fidanza cases “I believe they have absolutely no influence in any way”. “Those who know my history and the people of the parties who support me have no doubts and then, it is not a question of being guaranteed – added Bernardo – but we must always wait until they have to investigate and can tell if something really happened or if it didn’t happen. nothing”.
“I don’t think there have been any mistakes – Bernardo later underlined -. It would have been difficult to do more. I have done more than 7 thousand km. We have done a lot”. The coalition parties “I have always felt close to them – Bernardo remarked – are like a family”. And then he thanked “Matteo Salvini, Maurizio Lupi, President Berlusconi and Giorgia Meloni”.
“I wish Mayor Beppe Sala to go ahead and make our city grow but he has to look at what I saw. Sala I didn’t hear him. I will have the pleasure of hearing him. I really hope, beyond the programs, that people are not forgotten. who have decided not to vote. I will do so sitting in the city council “. “Sala is a gentleman, he is a decent man” he concludes.
BETWEEN GAFFE AND SLOGAN
“I run to win”. It was last July 3 when Luca Bernardo, head of Pediatrics at Fatebenefratelli, in the running as Sala challenger for the center-right for mayor of Milan, made his first exit as candidate in pectore, at the Lega gazebo in via Fauchè. Three days after the official announcement: after months of selections, rejected candidates and denials, the center-right finds the right place. Appreciated pediatrician, unknown to most, the race of the civic exponent begins at Palazzo Marino, an uphill race, made up of gaffes, controversies, slogans and some slips.
Born in 1967, with a degree in medicine and surgery, Bernardo grinds many kilometers during the election campaign, first with his Vespa, then with the electric car, ‘beating’ above all the suburbs, in his opinion completely forgotten by the outgoing mayor, Giuseppe Room. For his rival he first spends words of praise: “He was a good mayor, I consider him a great gentleman and a good person” and then sharpens his knives: “He is a champion of insecurity”, “The mayor of lounges and elite ”,“ Does not see the poor. ”“ Whoever votes for it is a gun ”.
For the electoral program he chooses an effective slogan ‘Milan together is cured’, throwing down about seventy pages ranging from mobility to security, from the abolition of area B, to the transfer of the prisoners of San Vittore, up to the recruitment 600 more traffic police and the temporary suppression of at least half of the Tari for commercial businesses damaged by Covid.
While his career as a pediatrician is brilliant (in addition to the two specializations in Pediatrics and Neonatology, Bernardo spent several periods in the United States, he was head of the Adolescent Disease-Bullying Commission at the Ministry of Education and on the front line during the Covid), in politics Bernardo appears a bit of a gaffer: first with the story of the gun in the hospital (detained with a regular firearm license), and then continue in a series of slips and phrases that raise a fuss of controversy.
He calls the voters who vote on the left ‘pistol’ and ‘radical chic with Rolexes’, he turns up his nose for a few phrases on anti-fascism: “I make no difference between a fascist and an anti-fascist”. The last ’tile’ is the voice chat in which he asks the parties that support him for funds for the electoral campaign, on pain of withdrawal from the race.
On his repeated gaffes, the Minister of Economic Development, Giancarlo Giorgetti sketches: “I don’t know if they are artfully created but surely all the Milanese know who our candidate is.” For his part, the person concerned has never made a drama out of them.
To those who asked him in recent days if his was a good election campaign, Bernardo has always replied that he had had a lot of satisfaction, that he had grinded 7 thousand kilometers to beat the challenger, losing a few pounds and listening to everyone: elderly, women and men, homeless people and people on the fringes of society.
With the polls closed, however, the outcome was without appeal: the voters preferred Sala. He didn’t break down. Arrived late in the evening at the electoral committee in via Tortona, blue suit, red shirt and a big smile on his lips, without mincing words Bernardo explained that “the adventure does not end here”, assuring once again that yes, he will enter at Palazzo Marino, but this time as a city councilor.