Administrative people are the test of nothing, one argued in the pause of the recording of Porta a Porta, a concept then confirmed by Bruno Vespa even with cameras. Administrative is not a test, another argued several times during election tours. It wouldn’t be strange if the two, who say the same thing with almost identical words looking at next week’s vote, weren’t currently the farthest pieces on the Italian political chessboard.

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Approach Renzi and Giuseppe Conte face the election rounds of October 3 and 4 with the same air of those who were not faced with absolutely exciting elections on the eve of administrative offices, It has historically rejected the local vote as a kind of tinsel; An important adjunct to asset redesign but strictly on a peripheral level; And, above all, irrelevant to determining the strength of a leader or party at the national level.

The move is at least as old as the direct election of mayors, which inaugurated the season in which citizens began to elect the first citizens, provincial presidents, regional governors. When victory seems distant to you, loot; When the local goal seems unattainable, minimize it. But what do you want to do in these elections?, said Ettore Rosato of Italia Viva a few days ago. Just change the observation point and the result doesn’t change. I’m not interested in overcoming Salvini, Giorgia Meloni told Piazza Duomo, about the ongoing derby between the brothers from Liga and Italy. Reading faced that next Sunday’s vote could open a crisis in Carrochio, Matteo Salvini used the same strategy: at least. I think they live on Mars… Faced with uncertain results, the attitude of national leaders, which border on courage in political elections, is replaced by a low profile in local elections.

According to the theory of Silvio Berlusconi, free from the Old Testament, according to which the local vote favored the progressives with ballots that rewarded the city dwellers, while attributed to Silvio Berlusconi, the administrative ones were always suffering for the majority. , But what a political sign, we only vote for mayors!, the scandal from Palazzo Chigi Matteo Renzi just days before the 2016 season, which may have testified to the wave of M5s in Rome and Turin. Eleven years earlier, from the same location, Silvio Berlusconi shrugged his shoulders to face the dark signs awaiting center-right in the 2005 administrative officesOpposition has an edge in difficult times for the economy. And indeed the opposition has won all over Europe…. A year after their forecasts were underestimated, none of them were in Palazzo Chigi anymore.

In stark contrast to what happened with Massimo d’Alema, the only prime minister in recent history who not only did not shy away from administrative roulette; But he also came to us with all his chips. At the table with our closest allies, in the midst of the 2000 regional election campaign, we hear – with the election in hand – that we have the problem of winning too much (at the table, among others, Claudio Velardi, Nicola Latore, Gianni Cupro). ended badly and resigned. Unlike 2009’s Berlusconi, already a veteran of politics, who understood how the local vote’s grapes were better off where they were. There was a vote in 32 provincial capitals and Knight, smelling the wind of a draw that fate could turn into victory or defeat, chose a third route. Do not? I had to do everything myself, as usual I had to pull the car myself. One way, perhaps the wisest, to articulate who would merit victory and who would be to blame for defeat. In the first case, and only in the first, his.