by Antonio Polito
Something is happening in the election campaign. But with banned (or secret) polls, you have to understand that from speeches
Something is happening in the election campaign. But how do you know what, now that surveys are banned, or at least classified? We propose a method: we carefully read the latest publications of the leaders and try to decipher them. One example: Berlusconi recently overturned the traditional center-right line on citizens’ income, so far uncertain whether he should abolish it completely like Meloni or just change it like Salvini. Instead, the knight surprisingly announced that he even wanted to “increase it, extend it to all citizens living in poverty: 4.7 million Italians”. What does this news mean? Does it perhaps reveal that an electoral shift is underway in the South, at the borderline between voting abstainers and recipients of citizenship income? And maybe Forza Italia is in dire need of a southern blood transfusion to keep from crashing? If we’re right and something happens in the south, who is the beneficiary?
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We can look for clues in Conte’s latest statements, often made after “crowds” in the back streets of Naples or Catania. There is a growing self-confidence, bordering on Peronistic muscular aggression. Could it be because, for the first time in the South, a certain number of single-member colleges are contestable? So he promised Meloni a “civil war” if the citizen income would be abolished. And he even addressed a physical challenge to Renzi: Let’s see if you have the courage to come south unescorted. This provoked an irritated but generally moderate reaction from the young Florentine, since he only used the second of the five steps of Leonardo Sciascia’s famous sequence against his opponent. Finally, one could decipher a certain change of tone during the Meloni campaign: previously reassuring and calm, now more nervous and “identifying”, starting with the Orbán case. Just “a little tired”, as she put it herself? A little “short arm” with regard to the desired finish line? Or is there more?
Il Corriere has a newsletter dedicated to the elections: it’s called Political Diary, it’s free and you can subscribe here
September 20, 2022 (Change September 20, 2022 | 10:51)
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