Anyone who lives in Rome knows very well what the city's problems are. And he also knows that he spends a few days there for tourism or for work. A wonderful and unique city in the world but degraded by the unspeakable administrations that have ruinously and guiltily managed it in the last ten years. No one is saved. The left cannot be saved which, despite having behind it the good administrations of Argan and Petroselli and the first legislatures of Rutelli and Veltroni, three years ago committed the unforgivable mistake of nominating and electing a clearly incompetent mayor like Ignazio Marino unless he realized it too much late. Least of all is the right wing saved, which after the disastrous administrations of Storace to the Region and Alemanno to the Municipality which caused enormous economic and moral damage to Rome and Lazio, should have the good taste to withdraw from the public scene for at least half a century . The grillini certainly have less complicity only because they have not governed but whose reliability is inversely proportional to the ambiguity in which their leader for the Capitol Virginia Raggi is distinguishing herself.
Traffic, public services, waste, housing, work, budget difficulties, mafia and malfeasance and above all an inefficient, expensive, absentee and very corrupt municipal administration. The problems of Rome are mainly these, together with the constant underestimation of the importance of maintenance, despite the guilty negligence of the second Veltroni administration for the atavistic emergency of potholes in the streets (a problem that seems trivial but it is not at all) has contributed ten years ago to discredit the left and to open the road to the Campidoglio to the right.
If this is the case, it would be logical to expect that each candidate for mayor would explain how he intends to solve Rome's problems and with whom, not with childishly amazing proposals but with the concreteness and immediacy of possible solutions. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. Except for some timid attempts by Roberto Giachetti and Alfio Marchini, all the other candidates for the leadership of Rome (Bertolaso so far missing) seem to be concerned with something else and above all with a mirage that can affect national politics but which does not even remotely touch the frightening problems of the Capital and that is how to hit Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and his party electorally, as if we were dealing with a popular referendum on the person. But with a novelty for Italian politics: the pact between the anti-system forces, mainly represented by Raggi for the Five Star Movement and by Giorgia Meloni for the populist right, to unite in the event of a runoff to defeat Renzi and the Democratic Party, with this revealing that for them the programs are completely irrelevant and interchangeable and that the good administration of Rome is the least of their worries.
Some say that this is the right price that the Democratic Party must pay for the mistakes it made, even if it had the courage to make unpopular choices in extremis and to oust the indefensible Mayor Marino. That may be the case, but in elections you don't vote with the rear-view mirror and, if it's right to judge the past, it's equally right to think about how and with whom to solve the problems of the immediate future. It may also be understandable to punish the Democratic Party electorally in Rome for the mistakes it has made, but if the result is only to elect an inadequate mayor once again, the boomerang effect is guaranteed.
On the other hand, there are those who say that rewarding the grillini – as long as they don't cry conspiracy in case of victory like the ineffable pentastellata senator Paola Taverna did – would be a nice way to put them to the test, in a difficult city like Rome, even if so far they have already failed in all the municipal administrations where they have conquered the mayor, except in Parma where – not surprisingly – Mayor Pizzarotti first had to disavow himself on the incinerator and then ended up in the crosshairs of the dictatorial Grillo-Casaleggio management. In reality these radical chic ruminations are better left to the Guardian and the Economist whose improvised and presumptuous knowledge of the Roman political reality and of the vaunted consistency of the lawyer Raggi only makes you smile but does not have the slightest interest for the citizens of the capital, who they are not looking for sorcerer's apprentices but simply for a good mayor and who, more and more every day, ask themselves three questions that have remained unanswered so far.
The first is this: if right now, in the event of a runoff, a mayoral candidate - as happens to Meloni or Raggi - says he will support his apparently opposed rival or accept his votes, why not vote immediately for his future alter ego? In other words: why should a Meloni sympathizer vote for her in the first round if then, in the event of a ballot, he will be asked to support Raggi and vice versa? Are Rays and Melons interchangeable?
Second question: is that of Raggi and Meloni only ill-concealed opportunism, common ambiguity or real amateurism?
Third and last question: beyond the equestrian circus games of Meloni and Raggi, who will solve Rome's problems?
