From rome
The center-left won in many cities that on Sunday and Monday held the second round of the Italian municipal elections. Among the most important, Rome and Turin. In Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, a member of the Democratic Party (PD) and former Minister of the Economy, will be mayor, who obtained just over sixty percent of the votes. In Turin, an industrial city in northern Italy where Fiat was based, Stefano Lo Russo, also an exponent of the PD, will be mayor, who scored 59 points.
The center-left alliance (whose main axis is the Democratic Party -PD- but includes other minor parties and sometimes the Five Star Movement, M5S) in the second round also won in other medium-sized cities in Italy such as Latina, Varese, Caserta, Cosenza, and these are added to the triumphs of the first round in Naples, Milan and Bologna, among others.
And this, according to analysts, speaks of a change in the mentality of Italians who are still suffering the tremendous effects of the pandemic on a social and economic level but who now seem to be designing a new path, since in recent years it was only the right the one that was growing.
For former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi “The debacle of the right in these elections has undoubtedly been helped by abstentionism. But the schizophrenic attitude against vaccines against covid and against Green Pass has also had an influence ”of the center-right, he commented.
According to Maurizio Molinari, editor of the prestigious Roman daily La Repubblica, the selection of certain candidates by the center-right has alienated many voters from the center. But Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing Liga, diminishes the importance of these facts. Others speak that Salvini is the great loser of these electoral days. It is still expected to know how each party was classified in these elections, since lately Fratelli d’Italia of the ultra-rightist Giorgia Meloni had surpassed the League as the first center-right party.
And all this happened despite the fact that attendance at the polls in the 65 municipalities that went to the second round was very low, much more than in the first round. According to official figures from the Ministry of the Interior, 44% of voters voted in the second round (53% in the first), that is, less than half of those who had the right to vote. Such low figures had not been seen in the last decade, especially in a country like Italy that stood out in Europe for the responsibility of its citizens in relation to voting that is not compulsory. The highest percentage of voters in this decade was seen in 2010 (74.43%), but it was decreasing and reached 66% in 2020, according to official data.
In Trieste (northeastern Italy), third most important city among those who were going to the second round, the center-right won instead. Roberto Dipiazza, who obtained 51% of the votes, will be mayor for the fourth time. Trieste is one of the most important commercial ports in the country and since last week an aggressive strike by port workers who refuse to accept the Green Pass (the pass that certifies that the person has had the two doses of the vaccine) anticovid) which from October 15 is mandatory in all workplaces.
The new mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, has a doctorate in Historical Sciences and is a professor at La Sapienza University in Rome. Since 2007 he has been a member of the national assembly of the PD. In 2009 he was elected MEP and re-elected in 2014. He was president of the Commission for Economic and Monetary Problems of the European Parliament. And this role surely facilitated his election in 2019 as Minister of Economy and Finance of the Italian government of Giuseppe Conte (M5S). “I will be the mayor of all the Romans and the Roman women, of the entire city,” Gualtieri declared to the press. But we have to work together to reduce the abstentionism that occurred in these elections. We will try to revitalize Rome and make it grow by creating occupation, to make it a more inclusive city close to people, and a champion of technological innovation. We use an agreement with all the economic forces of the city to relaunch Rome in the coming years ”.
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