There are almost a thousand Italian municipalities in which, between 6 and 7 May, about 8 million citizens will have to choose between lists, candidates for mayor and councilors, for the administrative elections.
And, given the numbers, it promises to be a difficult choiceAnd. At noon today, in fact, the deadline for the presentation of the lists expires, in the hope that we will be able to avoid messes like those of 2010 (the PDL lists for the Lazio regional ones), given the habit of the big parties to shrink, like the listless student, at the last minute. But meanwhile, around them, there is a proliferation of minor parties and civic lists.
The phenomenon of civic lists. A phenomenon that is not new, but certainly growing, given the recent, further, disintegration of the main parties, and the loss of their unifying force, especially in such particular realities, and the new wave of anti-politics that is shaking Italian citizens. The so-called "civic" lists, in fact, are characterized as a composite and anomalous universe: the classic lists of citizens "tired of the usual politics" are joined by the lists of "incognito" parties, i.e. lists of those parties which, to avoid comparisons with recent results which could turn out to be tricky, they choose to present themselves with different symbols.
To these two components, then, to further inflate the number of candidates, are added the internal rifts within what were, until recently, the grand coalitions. In this sense, the talked-about case of Verona is significant, where the great favourite, the outgoing mayor Tosi, will no longer be supported by the PDL, which is proposing its alternative candidate, but only by the League, as well as by 7 civic lists.
Lombardy: 34 municipalities 314 lists. Just think, to explain the dimension of this phenomenon, that, for the 34 municipalities in which votes will be held in Lombardy alone, the most important of which is Monza, at least 314 parties and civic lists will run, or that in the municipality of Alessandria the mayoral candidates there will even be 16, against the 15 announced for Genoa and 11 for Palermo (to which are added 1.300 aspiring city councilors).
It is difficult, at this moment, to have clear ideas in the face of such a multifaceted and disunited picture. One of the few certainties is that the number of ballots is bound to increase.
For the numbers alone, pending the actual electoral campaign which will start, with no holds barred, today, in the Regions with ordinary statute, 773 municipalities will be voted, of which 136 have over 15 thousand inhabitants, and in 22 provincial capitals . As regards the Regions with special statutes, the polls will be cast in over 140 municipalities in Sicily, 26 in Friuli Venezia Giulia, 3 in Valle d'Aosta and in one municipality in Trentino.
It makes a total of about 950 municipalities, plus a still difficult to quantify number of lists of all kinds that are arranged in a disintegrated world of different and (perhaps) basically the same options. The only hope for the citizen is that the choice does not become vertigo.
