The result obtained by the Democratic Party in the city of Avellino is objectively extraordinary.
Not only and not so much for the percentages obtained but for the proof of political maturity offered by the management group of via Tagliamento, by the candidates fielding for a seat in the Assizes. And it is a result that is worth reflecting on, because it gives us many truths that deserve to be shouted out.
Let’s start by saying that in the European elections the Irpinia Democratic Party confirmed its percentages above the average, in Avellino it obtained 26 percent, probably one of the highest percentages ever. And anyone who is surprised by the fact that in Avellino the party stopped at around twenty points is wrong, for the banal consideration that many members of the Democratic Party were present in the list “For Avellino Gengaro Mayor” and that many Dem voters in the city voted for candidates of other lists, also in support of other candidates. An absolutely physiological and predictable dispersion.
But there are two data that absolutely need to be underlined. The first, obviously, concerns the joint vote on the mayor. When, the day after Antonio Gengaro’s candidacy for the tricolor band was made official, the regional councilor Petracca called a press conference to reconstruct all the steps, to underline how that choice had been suffered by the base and the provincial management group, therefore to clarify that Antonio Gengaro was the candidate of the entire Democratic Party, because the party comes first, and that he could count on the sincere and determined support of the entire leadership group and all the candidates, many interpreted that statement as a warning, as incontrovertible proof of an irreparable fracture that would lead to disaster at the polls.
For weeks the specter of the split vote on Gengaro accompanied us but in reality the split did not exist, except in absolutely physiological proportions for such a broad and strong political coalition. The party’s leadership group, the candidates for the City Council, campaigned primarily on Gengaro, they did it with determination, and they brought home the result despite all the predictions. Because in a party you don’t run as a candidate but you are nominated, in a party you either stay or you don’t. What happened with Pizza did not happen because those who led to its defeat at the time, primarily former mayor Festa, were shown the door in the following years by this management group. Everything comes back.
But this ruling group, which today probably leads the strongest PD in the whole of Southern Italy, which represents the vast majority of municipal administrations in the province, pays the price for having changed the fate of Via Tagliamento, for having been able to change the skin of the party.
Like flies resting on the back of an elephant, the old mammasantissima of the party struggle to accept that they are no longer the owners of the party and, on the eve of each electoral step, they set out to question the balance they have acquired, to boycott the line defined in via Tagliamento , seeking agreements with anyone who may be useful to the cause, whether it be the President of the Province, whether it be the former mayor of Avellino, as long as he was at liberty and wore the tricolor sash, whether it be with some national leader useful for this purpose as happened, in fact, on the affair of the capital.
And they promptly find themselves with their butts on the ground and their legs in the air, as always happens to those who walk with their eyes downcast animated by spite. And so, to stay in Avellino, let’s see what contribution these gentlemen have guaranteed to the cause of Antonio Gengaro, what specific weight, in terms of representation capacity, the same ones who on the eve of the electoral campaign boasted of having entire lists ready, that is, they claimed, without any title, to represent the Schlein area in the city, they demonstrated that they had through their respective candidates. Between Rosetta D’Amelio, the former Senator De Luca and the alleged followers of the national secretary we count just over 700 votes, maximum 750 out of a total of 5764. And we are talking about nine candidates.
For goodness sake, every vote is useful and 700 votes are many, many. But the enormity of what happened remains, the fact remains that a management group that only in the elections of two years ago, while the world was collapsing, brought home the best result ever in the whole of the South, the second on a national level, is been questioned and forced to suffer the blackmail of a handful of alleged references to the obsessive search for an impossible revenge, finding support in a parliamentarian elected in Switzerland and in a President of the Province who in the meantime was preparing a list in support of another candidate for the tricolor band.
And the sense of responsibility remains, the seriousness of a management group that also took charge of that misery, that did not give in to the temptation of revenge, but rather identified victory as the only possible revenge in the interest of a city reduced to rubble and in Gengaro, whose history and UCI competence has never been questioned, the best possible candidate. The candidate of the Democratic Party.
