After the European Championships, the games are officially closed on the candidatures also with regards to municipal elections which will be held in conjunction with the vote in Brussels and Strasbourg. After two terms and ten consecutive terms as mayor, the outgoing mayor of Bergamo, Giorgio Gori, will no longer be able to appear before his citizens to be reconfirmed in his institutional role; and this is why he opted for inclusion in the Democratic Party list as a possible MEP. So the race to succeed him began. Having not found an agreement on a name and municipality, Pd and 5 Star Movement will be divided in this city (as well as in other municipalities that will renew the Council and the Executive), while the center-right will present itself as united as always to try to wrest another important city from the left.
Elena Carnevali (centre-left)
Let’s start with the Dem candidate, also supported by the Verdi, the Italian Left + Europe and the PSI. Elena Carnevali, 59 years old, obtained her diploma as a physiotherapist in 1986 and a degree in physiotherapy from the University of Verona in 2010. After her years of training which also saw her commitment to volunteering with the Bergamaschi Disabled Association, in 1999 she was elected city councilor with the DS in opposition to the elected Forzista mayor Cesare Veneziani. Five years later she was nominated instead councilor for social policies, migration and international cooperation of the new council formed by the mayor Roberto Bruni. After a third experience at the Bergamo Council, Carnevali enters Parliament as deputy of the Democratic Party: position then confirmed also between 2018 and 2022. A year ago she supported Stefano Bonaccini in the primaries, but was defeated. Now she is trying her hand at being mayor of Bergamo.
Andrea Pezzotta (centre-right)
Fratelli d’Italia, Lega, Forza Italia and Noi Moderati have unanimously agreed on the lawyer’s name in recent weeks Andrea Pezzotta as a unitary candidate of centre-right for the next administrative elections for the Municipality of Bergamo. Well-known lawyer of the parents of Yara Gambirasio – the thirteen-year-old found murdered in February 2011 about ten kilometers from her hometown of Brembate di Sopra – the 67-year-old exponent has been practicing as a lawyer since 1988, after obtaining a degree in Law from the University of Studies in Milan, with exclusive reference to the violations provided for by the Penal Code and the Special Criminal Laws. Pezzotta was also in his career councilor for urban planning of the Municipality of Bergamo from 2009 to 2014. His objective now will be precisely to turn the clock back to ten years ago, when the last mayor of the center-right Orobic city left the scene: Franco Tentorio.
Vittorio Apicella (5 Stars)
It also fits into the race towards Palazzo Frizzoni Vittorio Apicelladesignated by 5 stars after the failure to reach an agreement with the Democratic Party. He is almost 60 years old and is a professor of Psychology at the Mariagrazia Mamoli institute. He has already been a municipal councilor: to be precise from 1988 to 1995 in the Municipality of Campagna (province of Salerno) where he was also budget councilor, finances and economic planning. For three years he was also RSU (United Trade Union Representative) at the Caniana Professional Institute in Bergamo and today he is an elected member of the teaching staff on the school council of the school where he currently works. In the presentation of his candidacy Apicella described himself in this way: “Since I was a boy I have had the passion for politics which I still have.
I decided to run for Mayor because I strongly believe that the values, principles and issues brought forward by the M5s can also find concrete application in our city“.
