The ambush set up on the eve of the vote by the president of the Anti-Mafia Commission, Rosy Bindi, on Prime Minister Matteo Renzi poisons today's regional elections which, involving over 22 million voters, can rightly be considered a sort of mid-term elections for the government and a sort of referendum for Renzi and his attempt to change Italy.
It was the Premier himself who defined the candidacies present in the regional lists in Campania and Puglia as "embarrassing", but Bindi's disconcerting solitary initiative brings neither clarity nor justice in front of the voters and has only the unpleasant flavor of a rancorous revenge against Renzi, of whose leadership she has never acknowledged despite the indisputable verdicts of the primaries and the last party congress that left her in the minority.
Bindi's move raises two crucial questions that cannot remain unanswered: 1) if we don't want to promote summary trials and a grotesque witch hunt, why on earth should it be up to a political body and not instead the judiciary to evaluate the requirements of integrity and of eligibility of candidates in elections? 2) the timing chosen by Bindi raises a thousand suspicions: why was such a controversial verdict released just on the eve of the vote and not at the start of the electoral campaign?
As Roberto Saviano wrote yesterday in "la Repubblica", Bindi's "wrong and counterproductive" move risks becoming a real boomerang "because it gives a presentable license to all those not included in the proscription list" but who "perhaps are front names ” of the bosses of the underworld, thus nullifying any real battle against corruption, clientelism, the Camorra and organized crime which heaven knows how much need there is above all and not only in the South. But this is the worst, so much the worse better than ruining Italy and making the political struggle look like the Palio of Siena where it doesn't count to win but only to defeat the opponent.
Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the regional elections have completely left their purely local ambit and have become a referendum for Matteo Renzi and his leadership in the government and in the Democratic Party.
Renzi will not make Massimo D'Alema's mistake of tying the fate of his government to the regional vote and will continue to govern regardless of tomorrow's electoral result, but there are those who do not see how the palace intrigues of his opponents interiors have made its race uphill and have obscured the results of the Government, completely reversing the terms in which the country finds itself today.
Just in recent days, Istat certified that Italy has finally come out of the recession and that, however weak it may be, growth is starting to produce more permanent employment contracts. And just in recent days, the Governor of the Bank of Italy, Ignazio Visco, has also promoted Renzi's reform strategy. And the president of Confindustria, Giorgio Squinzi did the same, albeit with less warmth than the savior of Fiat Sergio Marchionne, who as a good renovator has a natural feeling with the Premier.
After all, Bindi and the Taliban of the Pd minority can tell all the fairy tales they want to justify their defeats and their nostalgia for the past, but there are those who do not see how Renzi has done in one year what they and the action by Berlusconi and the League have not been able to do in twenty years and certainly would not have been able to do the stainless grillino solipsism. Renzi may or may not like it, but the approval of the Job Act, of the Italicum, of the anti-corruption law, of the civil liability of magistrates, of the fight against eco-crimes and the first yeses of the Parliament to the reform of the school, that of the Public Administration and that of the Senate are not announcements but they are facts.
It would be absurd to interrupt the path of reforms at the very moment in which Italy finally sees the exit from the tunnel, but this has already happened in the days of the Prodi governments and we need to cross our fingers so that Bertinotti.2 revenge does not come back to dominate the scene with other interpreters.
However, one thing is certain: if Matteo Renzi fails to fully assert his leadership in the party by scrapping the old local and national ruling classes and ensuring that the line freely chosen by members and voters can actually be applied also in Parliament and in the local authorities, as every elementary rule of democracy requires, his reforming drive will face growing difficulties, with serious damage not so much for him and for the Democratic Party as for the country. The whole world knows that Renzi did not like Enzo De Luca's candidacy for the Campania regional elections and a forward-looking party would have ensured that the former mayor of Salerno did not appear and did not win the primaries which consolidated his local leadership. And the whole world also remembers that De Luca was Undersecretary for Transport in the Letta government without Bindi having anything to complain about: double standards.
May Renzi win today by 7 to 0 or 4 to 3 in the Regionals, his will remain a mutilated victory if the country and the international community have the perception that the battle for change in Italy is no longer unstoppable and that the sabotage of they can still raise their heads and strike.
We are at a crucial turning point in the struggle to modernize Italy and the real stake of the Regionals is all here: can Italy be changed or not? Today's vote will tell us.
