The latest negative election results have rattled the nerves of Umberto Bossi's party. Instead of attempting a serious analysis of the reasons for the loss of consensus which has affected not only large cities such as Milan, but also smaller towns such as Novara, the Northern League have revived the watchwords of secessionist extremism, reinforcing it with rude gestures against of Italy and the Italian flag, thus hoping to reawaken the conflicted spirit of the Po Valley people.
Furthermore, alongside the flags in the wind, the practical action was concentrated on defending the positions of power held by the Northern League nomenclature and on the desire to conquer others. This explains the vote against the motion presented to the Chamber on the abolition of the Provinces, the strenuous defense of farmers who have not paid the fines on milk quotas, and, just today, the declarations of Minister Calderoli against the privatization of companies owned by local authorities or by the central State proposed by Minister Tremonti to strengthen the public finance consolidation maneuver and make it more credible to financial market operators who have to decide whether or not to buy Italian public debt securities.
If one considers, then, that the other small adjustments to the maneuver requested by the league all go in the direction of defending small interests of groups of their presumed voters, one gets the clear impression that the Northern League staff is totally unaware of the delicate situation in which Italy is found, and that the interpretation of the true causes of a certain electoral disaffection is also incorrect.
Indeed, it is doubtful that the productive classes of the North, one of the richest areas of Europe, would ask the League for a trivial replacement of the large and voracious centralized public sector, with an equally large and voracious regional or local public sector. Nor is it sensible to think that the entrepreneurs of the North, whether large or small, really intend to close themselves within the walls of their small piedmont village, forgetting the fact that a large part of the success of the northern industry derives from having been able to conquer good positions first on the European markets and now on the global ones.
The productive classes of the North supported the federalism of the League because they wanted to get rid of the snares and snares of the last Governments of the first Republic all dedicated to cultivating clientele, mostly, but not only, from the south, instead of supporting the efficiency efforts of the productive classes northerners. But now they find a League always lined up in defense of northern public companies or in the attack of banks and banking foundations.
Defending the interests of the territory does not mean becoming impoverished by looking only within the walls of Gallarate or Verona, but on the contrary having a strategy for increasing productivity and positioning on the world market that can allow companies to prosper.
The Northern League should therefore be at the forefront in requesting the reduction of public waste in all sectors, from health care, to pensions, to the costs of politics. Instead, throughout the long phase of preparation of the Tremonti maneuver for balancing the budget in 2014 (which then when it came out did not convince the markets, so that now it must be strengthened) the League did not signal itself for innovative proposals for spending cuts public, but has been careful to defend that portion of spending that benefits their political class or fringes of their constituents.
In short, a not very liberal and not at all liberal League which, beyond the chatter, actually defends the primacy of politics and that is the power interests of its own workshop. But is this exactly what the people of the North want?
Ernesto Auci
