In Rome, last Monday, an obvious but necessary step took place. The ruling group of the Democratic Party had long since regrouped around the candidacy of Antonio Gengaro for the office of mayor but it was necessary to seal the pact at the highest levels precisely because of the deep lacerations that had accompanied that solution. It is the politics that is done in parties, the politics of complexity and mediation, with its times, its logic, its rituals.
Every fracture is preparatory to a recomposition, at least as long as the duty of belonging prevails over selfishness, at least as long as a party remains such. And as fascinating as the reconstructions according to which the Roman summit served to assign future tasks to guarantee the agreement may be, those who know the dynamics of politics know that nothing was discussed other than the obvious, the need to give perspective to the recomposition in key to government and management, once victory has been achieved, in accordance with the logic that politics, or rather representation, imposes.
Antonio Gengaro is the candidate of the Democratic Party and no one, not even at the moment of maximum tension, has ever questioned this truth. At the same time Antonio Gengaro, like those who supported his candidacy until he succeeded with the decisive intervention of the Nazarene, has always known that the Democratic Party is first and foremost his ruling class, with its strength and its roots, they are the councilors outgoing municipal representatives, is the base that refers to the regional councilor Maurizio Petracca, is the party led by Nello Pizza. It was obvious that a natural recomposition would be achieved, but the fact that today Antonio Gengaro can count on the staunch support of the entire Democratic Party, starting with that of the outgoing city councillors, does not restore any certainty to the centre-left mayoral candidate.
The compactness of the apparatus, however necessary, will not be enough to guarantee victory in a dismayed, shocked and nauseated city. It won’t be enough to scream, it won’t be enough to brandish the moral issue, the house-to-house algebra won’t be enough. The strength of the apparatus will be put at the service of opinion, therefore at the service of a credible proposal, of new words, of concrete solutions. And then, once the necessary recomposition has been sealed, the real challenge for Gengaro and for the centre-left is to start again with conviction from the program developed on the centre-left tables for over a year, it is to reclaim that tiring path, to challenge the city on that vision that it should represent the true cement of the coalition.
The center-left will not win through inertia among the rubble. He will win only if he is able to convince the people of Avellino with the strength of his proposals. And if for over a year a useless little theater hasn’t been staged, if the work done on the tables has truly produced an organic vision of the future, a shared and ambitious proposal, until today the people of Avellino have not noticed it.
If there is no program without politics, politics is made by men. On whose legs ideas walk.
