The Northern League member with the pigtail and the civil rights lawyer. The administrative center-right looking for an encore and the center-left (united here) with Pd-M5S traction looking for revenge.
The battle to the last vote
In the shadow of the Estense Castle, tomorrow and Sunday, the most interesting battle in this round of administrative elections along the Via Emilia will take place. First of all because the challenge, in a region where public administration usually rhymes with centre-left, in Ferrara is reversed: the fort to defend is not red but green, like the League of mayor Alan Fabbri and Matteo Salvini, besieged by the center-left looking for redemption, led by the civic Fabio Anselmo.
The challenge for the centre-right
The second reason is that here, despite the percentage pressing of the Brothers of Italy, the Northern League still holds the center-right helm. And Fabbri’s result could be the thermometer of the future recovery capabilities of a League that in recent years has been drained of preferences and sympathies by the Melonians. The challenge for the leadership of Ferrara is actually a four-way race, in the field there are also the civic leftist Anna Zonari and the centrist Daniele Botti, but it is on the two candidates of the main parties that everyone’s eyes are focused.
Two opposite profiles
It is difficult to imagine two more distant profiles. On the one hand Alan Fabbri, the atypical Northern League player who mixes Salvinian hard fist — starting from security and migrants — e Emilia-Romagna bonhomie. He remembers, when he can, that he comes “from an anti-fascist family”, he defines Bella Ciao as “a popular song”, years ago he even ended up under accusation (from the right) for having attended the Gay Pride (last Saturday, more prudently, he sent a emissary of his civic list at the LGBT+ parade in the city). He winks at moderate voters of course, but also at those of the centre-left.
At the antipodes is Fabio Anselmo, lthe lawyer of the Federico Aldrovandi and Stefano Cucchi cases, companion of Senator Ilaria Cucchi. One capable of holding together the historical battles of the left with the defense of the marine Massimiliano Latorre, the lieutenant who remained in prison in India for 106 days together with his colleague Salvatore Girone. And, as a lawyer, Anselmo focused his electoral campaign on respect for the laws, as well as on “classic” issues such as security, the reception of migrants and the mayor’s staff expenses.
The latest controversy
At the push of the centre-left coalition, the Municipality’s website and Mayor Alan Fabbri’s Facebook page first ended up under the scrutiny of Corecom and then targeted by Agcom for violating the level playing field during the election campaign (the municipal administration has already announced an appeal to the TAR). There Anselmo’s legal battle it culminated on May 23rd in a sit-in protest, more or less for the same reasons, just as the Northern League mayor was inaugurating the restyling of a square in Ferrara. “We are citizens demonstrating against a press conference outside the law,” Anselmo chanted in front of the police forces who were keeping two fronts separated. “This is a serious intimidation. They accuse us of being fascists, but it seems to me that fascism lives elsewhere”, Mayor Fabbri responded promptly. It is inevitable that, in a climate like this, the prospect of a face-to-face meeting between the two challengers has disappeared. Not even in the very neutral studios of Tgr Emilia-Romagna did the confrontation that many expected take place (Fabbri withdrew).
The data
In the absence of party polls that emerged in the midst of the dispute, it was the numbers and the declarations of the trade associations that gave the idea of a favorable wind for the outgoing mayor. In mid-May, Ipsos research commissioned by Confindustria Area Centro, which represents Ferrara’s entrepreneurs, highlighted that 60% of businesses in the city think that Ferrara is going “in the right direction”. A few days later Confesercenti, with all due respect to the centre-left’s criticism of Bruce Springsteen’s maxi concert which was held a year ago during the days of the flood, defined that event as «the peak of turnover for the hospitality sector in the last fifty years. ‘years”. With these assumptions no one in the ranks of the Democratic Party seriously expects a victory in the first round. A runoff, though, maybe yes. And in the second round, driven by the great carousel of ties, the match may not have an obvious ending.
