Genoa – They are all right and anyone can point to the faults of others. The withdrawal from the race for the presidency of Confindustria on the eve of the vote, however, it is a defeat that does not only sting the shoulders of Edoardo Garrone, but also on those of all other Ligurian entrepreneurs. Especially on the Genoese ones. And, consequently, it weighs on all citizens. It would not have been a mere question of bell tower: a Genoese Confindustria president would have looked beyond the negotiations of Italian manufacturing, he would have raised attention from just the union tensions of the Po Valley factory or from the slow reconversions of the South. He would have projected himself towards that horizon of innovation, globalization and transition that Genoa has so far been able to indicate to many of its realities, especially in the world of shipping. And he would have had new cards to deal at the Palazzo Chigi table on strategic issues such as those of the steel industry, infrastructure and the green turning point.
Instead, Genoa prevented this chance with a double deadly move. First with a banned candidacy (Garrone on Antonio Gozzi), then with a campaign against (Gozzi on Garrone): certainly everything under the surface of the sea, without clarifying declarations, exploiting the medieval surrender to silence that the baroque electoral systems of Confindustria impose to competitors and voters. It is the eternal victory of the exhausting and stale Genoese strategy of the maniman, which has its own precise, double and progressive conjugation: rather than make you win I run, rather than see you excel let anyone else win too. Exactly, that's how it was.
Emanuele Orsini can install himself in Carlo Bonomi's chair without even fighting. Now Genoa risks remaining marginal, as has often happened, under the ivory tower of Viale dell'Astronomia. Nothing new, for goodness sake. The Genoese tendency towards fratricide is consolidated, both in entrepreneurship and in politics. And if in football everything boils down to a playful spirit that is at times fun (the important thing is that the opposing team loses, then there is everything to gain), in the real world the philosophy is harmful and punitive.
Make a list of the main locations in Liguria e notice where a Genoese doesn't sit. From the Region to the port, from finance to large companies and so on. Not to mention the national top positions, from the government to the categories, from entertainment to former subsidiaries. Was it once different? Only partially. But if the city is weak in the control rooms, its citizens are also weak and a friendship at the top levels of the multinational or at the ministry or control body is not enough. Of course, a city can be weak, weak in practice and have difficulty emerging. But for Genoa the reason is different: the city has long been blocked, embalmed, trapped by volleys of crossed vetoes, more on people than on programs. A phenomenon that cost the Democratic Party its regional leadership a decade ago. And that could soon make the center-right pay a price too. This is to talk only about parties, where the disease is out in the open.
The debacle, the double debacle of Gozzi and Garrone, is a lighthouse capable of illuminating Genoese Vietnam which harnesses the interests, dynamism, hopes, abilities and merit of those in the city who fight and struggle every day against the windmills of the province and the demographic winter, without elbowing their way to the detriment of their neighbors, without clinging to the bandwagon of the usual suspects and without believing in the fables of divinatory models. But this time too the defeat will not give any lessons to the various characters on stage: Genoa will continue to run on that track of “rather” and “but also”, allowing itself to be overtaken left and right first in Liguria and then in Rome. Also because the Genoese should resolve it themselves: no one from the outside has the interest or convenience of throwing themselves into a mediation, which is, moreover, too difficult and not a harbinger of special effects.
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