Rome will have a Social Democratic mayor seven years after the last one, Ignazio Marino, had to resign over an alleged corruption scandal.. Roberto Gualtieri, former Minister of Economy of the Democratic Party (PD) and former European Parliament, will occupy the presidential chair of the Board of the Rome Assembly. He will replace Virginia Raggi, spearhead of the rise of the 5-Star Movement (M5S) five years ago and a clear reflection of the failure of the anti-caste party in the difficult transition from street protests to governing institutions. The left culminates with Rome an excellent result in the municipal elections, where it secures the command of the five main cities of Italy (Rome, Milan, Turin, Bologna and Naples) in the next five years. The meager participation in this second round – it was voted during the day on Sunday and this Monday until 3:00 p.m. -, of 44.25% according to provisional data from the Ministry of the Interior, leaves the bitter note of these elections, the last great acid test before the generals of 2023.
Italy returned to the polls between Sunday and the morning of this Monday to celebrate the second round of the administrative elections, which had yet to decide the fate of the municipalities of 65 cities, after a first shift on October 3 and 4, when the center-left prevailed without having to wait for the second round in Milan, Bologna (north) and Naples (south), among other cities. The result in each of the 1,340 municipalities that were at stake in both shifts draws a dotted line that outlines the current balance of Italian politics. A scenario in which the moderate left is rebuilt forming a bloc with different parties, including the 5 Star Movement (in Bologna and Naples this union has worked perfectly) to face the power of the right-wing coalition (Brothers of Italy, Forza Italy and the League).
The test tube of the municipal elections, where several experiments have been tried, reinforces the thesis of the general secretary of the PD, Enrico Letta, and of the leader of the 5 Star Movement, Giuseppe Conte: with the current electoral law it is only possible to face the right united in a kind of center-left coalition.
In addition, the two main parties of the right (League and Brothers of Italy) fail in all their territorial bets and take comfort in the results of Forza Italia, their junior partner, which saves the furniture in Trieste and Calabria (where the governor was elected ). The trend marked in this second round also speaks of a return of the right-wing voter to the ideological center. “We have to reflect on why we have lurched too many times in recent months,” explains a deputy from the League to this newspaper. The extremes, at least in these elections, have stopped being profitable. The capital of Italy, according to the scrutiny achieved after the polls closed, provides the clearest image of the country’s political situation. After five years of the Raggi government, which marked the beginning of the rise in the institutions of the 5 Star Movement and the beginning of a populist storm unparalleled in Europe, the PD is recovering the lost pulse among its electorate.
The resounding victory of Gualtieri (60.1% of the votes) in the second round against the candidate of the right, Enrico Michetti (39.9%), relaunches the party that Letta leads today and makes him a candidate to govern again the country and on the wall before the advance of ultra-right populisms in Italy. The clear defeat of Michetti – who was the candidate from civil society chosen by the leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, to lead the right-wing coalition in Rome – leaves its main sponsor in a bind. “The center-right is defeated in these elections. But I would not speak of a debacle, “said Meloni herself, who greeted the press with a” good afternoon, to say something. ” This problem is added to the failure of Milan: the current mayor, Giuseppe Sala, wiped out the candidate appointed by Matteo Salvini in the first round. The leader of the League will also now have to make internal accounts with the defeat in Varese (Lombardy), one of the historical fiefdoms of his party that he cannot recover and that will continue in Social Democratic hands.
Rome is not the only great city to turn left. The progressive Stefano Lo Russo, with 59.2%, has managed to win the mayor of Turin over his opponent, Paolo Damilano, who would have managed to obtain 40.8% of the votes. “It is a result beyond our expectations”, an “important” achievement that entails “a lot of responsibility”, celebrated the new councilor, who replaces the grillina Chiara Appendino. The Piedmontese capital was also one of the flags of the M5S to show that it was capable of managing one of the economic engines of Italy. As happened with Rome, the citizens ended up fed up with their mayor, who has not even run for re-election.
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Trieste, the only one on the right
The left also won the majority of provincial capitals such as Caserta, Cosenza, Isernia, Latina, Savona and Varese, while Trieste will be followed by the current mayor, the right-wing Roberto Dipiazza, after a frenzied comeback (51.3%). That is the only joy of the right wing, which faces a catastrophic result for the coalition made up of the Brothers of Italy, the League and Forza Italia and which in tennis terms could be summed up as 6-1. The victory in the capital of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region (at the hands of a Forza Italia candidate who does not agree with the ultras theses of Meloni and Salvini) leaves at least some argument to hold on to a horizon without major electoral appointments —more beyond the succession to the Presidency of the Republic, which is elected by Parliament – until the general elections of 2023.
The participation has been the worst news of this second round. Cities like Turin have had their worst ever record, with 42% turnout to the polls. But the general data also speaks of an average right-wing voter who has stayed at home in this second round – the districts in Rome with the most participation, for example, are from the fiefdoms of the left – and who, in a general election, could be more active again. A fact that keeps open a party that still has a year and a half to reach its outcome.
Gualtieri’s challenges in Rome
Rome, where the left clearly prevails, will be a great test of management for its new mayor and the PD’s show of strength to showcase its ability to manage a city that seemed ungovernable in recent years. The capital of Italy, the second largest city in Europe (1,285 square kilometers), a monster with a low population density and meager tax collection, has been going through very serious structural problems for decades. The challenges that Gualtieri will have to face from the first minute of his mandate will be the failed collection of rubbish and the colossal public company that manages it (8,000 workers), obsolete transport, poor maintenance of the public highway or the accumulation of delays in the public services (the average to bury a relative was 35 days in the month of April).
Rome began a dramatic drop in the quality of its public services since Walter Veltroni, mayor of the PD, left office in 2008. Since then, cases of corruption and mismanagement have followed one another and the city has entered a spiral of lockdown. without precedents. Raggi took office with the promise of reversing the situation, but all the polls indicate that the Romans consider that things have not improved in the last five years. Gualtieri would have a very complicated mission in the coming months.
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