The ruling centre-left Democratic
Party (PD) held Emilia-Romagna in regional elections Sunday
dealing an upset to rightwing strongman Matteo Salvini and
providing some relief for the PD-Five Star (M5S) government in
Rome.
Salvini's whose nationalist league party had become the top
party in the leftwing fief in last year's European elections,
had vowed to "evict" Premier Giuseppe Conte's government in the
event of a win in Emilia-Romagna.
In the event, the PD's incumbent Governor Stefano Bonaccini
got 51.6% of the vote to the 43.7% of his League challenger
Lucia Borgonzoni.
The M5S candidate, Simone Benini, saw his vote collapse to
3.5% compared to the 33% score for the anti-establishment group
in national elections two years ago.
PD leader Nicola Zingaretti hailed the result after the PD
became top party again, saying Italy was returning to a
"bipolar" left-right system after years of tripolar politics
with the M5S somewhere along the spectrum, with the PD picking
up many disaffected M5S voters.
"Salvini has lost and the government is stronger," he said.
"This stronger government should now relaunch its action," he
said, referring to an upcoming state-of-government
'verification' aimed at drawing up a new agenda, hopefully until
the end of the parliamentary term in 2023.
Salvini was not too crestfallen despite coming up short after
months of massive campaigning in the central-northern region.
"For the first time in 70 years we made a game of it," he
said.
He said that "change in Emilia Romagna is just postponed".
"We have now won eight regions out of nine, it could have
been worse," Salvini said.
"We're preparing ourselves for five years of passionate
opposition," he said.
"I'd do everything over again, even the doorbell," he said,
referring to a controversial call on a Bologna Tunisian family
asking if a drug pusher, the son, lived there.
(Bonaccini said Monday "let him ring doorbells at his own
house".)
Salvini also defended the decision to end the campaign in
Bibbiano, where a foster scandal hit the PD, despite accusations
of exploiting kids for electoral reasons.
The vote compounded the travails of the M5S, whose leader,
Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, resigned amid defections,
backstabbing and a string of poor results last week leaving
caretaker Vito Crimi in his stead.
Commentators said the PD, so far the junior partner in the
alliance, was now likely to put its foot down on policies that
have split the alliance, such as a reform of the statute of
limitations.
Crimi tried to show optimism.
"We won't give in, we are united," he said. "Let the
government go ahead, we'll work flat out", ahead of an
'estates-general' reckoning and brainstorming session on March
13-15.
Observers said much of the credit for the PD victory in and
around Bologna should go to the new grassroots leftwing
'Sardines' movement, which sprang up and packed squares in
Emilia-Romagna in November in opposition to Salvini's
nationalist populist policies, and challenged him directly in
the regional elections.
Bonaccini told a press conference that he had phoned Sardines
leader Mattia Santori for the first time Monday and thanked him
for their "extraordinary mobilisation".
(The four Bolognese founders of the Sardines, including
Santori, issued a statement Monday saying "now it's up to us,
the hardest part if starting".)
(They said: "We will be present and ready for battle where
they are going to vote, especially if the (populist) style which
(the League) has shown in Emilia-Romagna and Calabria is
re-presented in Puglia, Campania, Marche, Tuscany, Liguria, and
Val d'Aosta").
(Zingaretti told a press conference: the Sardines were a
healthy shock, and they convinced many people to turn out and
vote").
Bonaccini also told the press conference: "Salvini challenged
me and he lost".
Bonaccini also said the M5S had "squandered" a chance to team
up with the centre left, which they decided not to do after the
experiment failed in Umbria last year.
Meanwhile in Sunday's other regional elections, the
centre-right's Jole Santelli, from Silvio Berlusconi's
centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party, triumphed by 55% to 30%
over the PD's Filippo Calippo.
Here, too, the M5S vote collapsed and its candidate,
Francesco Aiello, got just 7%, failing to reach the 8% threshold
to get onto the regional council.
Santelli became the first woman governor of Calabria, and in
southern Italy as a whole.
In a transparency move, she announced that she would install
video cameras and a tape recorder in her office to fight
attempted corruption.
After the threat to the national government eased, the spread
between Italian and German 10-year bond yields, a sign of market
confidence in Italy, dropped to below 140 points, on 138 basis
points, from 156 last Friday, with the yield down to just 1.05%
from 1.34%.
Conte reiterated "it was not a vote on the government" and
said he was not changing his mind just because of the PD win,
which overturned a slight late opinion-poll lead for Leaguer
Bergonzoni.
The premier added: "the big loser here was Salvini".
Conte said Salvini's doorbell stunt - in which it is not
clear whether the 17-year-old Tunisian boy may be suspected of
pushing or not - was "disgraceful and obscurantist".
The boy has hired a lawyer and said "now they're all calling
me a pusher, before they used to call me 'cartola'," a Bolognese
expression for a likeable and lively character.
Surrounded by a crowd of supporters and accompanied by a film
crew, Salvini went to the home in Bologna's working class and
high-crime Pilastro district after a local mother who had lost
her son to drugs fingered the boy as a pusher.
(Bologna's PD Mayor Virginio Merola said Monday the stunt had
backfired just like Salvini's attempt to force early elections
by bringing down the last government at the Papeete beach club
on the Romagna riviera last summer).
"I'm hoping for a broad progressive front against the various
rightwing forces", Conte added, referring also to two other
foes, Giorgia Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy (FdI) and
Berlusconi's FI, which has been outstripped by first the
League's climb from 17% to 33% and now Meloni's own surging
party, to 11-12%. Both ran with the League in Emilia-Romagna and
Calabria.
By contrast, Berlusconi's party has slipped to just 7-8%.
After calling for the M5S to team up with the PD in a "more
organic" way, Conte also said that the turmoil in the M5S was
not causing any government instability.
"Now it's time for agenda 2023, and let the parties stop
plating flags," the premier said.
On tensions between the PD and M5S on the statute of
limitations and other issues, he said "the numbers in parliament
are unchanged" despite some 20 M5S defections, meaning that the
anti-establishment and populist movement was still the top party
numerically despite its woes.
Zingaretti, for his part, said "we're backing Conte to open
stage two of the government".
As for the PD's own future, Zingaretti said "we're drawing up
the calendar for our renewal".
There are another two government partners, former PD leader
and ex-premier Matteo Renzi's Italia Viva (IV) party, and the PD
splinter leftwing group Free and Equal (LeU).
Salvini had been hoping to wrest another leftwing stronghold
from the PD after an upset win in Umbria last year.
The anti-migrant Euroskeptic League leader had tried and
failed to force snap elections by pulling the plug on a 14-month
M5S-League government in July, only to see the M5S surprisingly
team up with their longtime foes in the PD.
Attention now turns to seven other regional elections after
the spring, with crunch tests in Veneto and Liguria where the
League will be aiming to hold on to heartlands after several
multiple mandates.
The PD and the League will also face up in Puglia, Marche,
Tuscany, Campania and Val d'Aosta.
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