“The dem candidate for the Regionals? I would say that Garibaldi would be perfect.” Mayor Matteo Lepore jokes, yesterday at Patrizia Finucci Gallo’s living room, commenting on the plaque attesting to the passage of the Hero of the Two Worlds to the ‘Il Guercino’ hotel. Then he becomes serious and once again claims the need to choose the candidate from here. From Bologna. A “model”, given that the Democratic Party took 41.1%. Broadening our gaze, then “Bologna has collected 10% of the total consensus of the Democratic Party at a national level”, the mayor remarks, underlining how the capital deserves to be “among the majority shareholders of the party”. In short, anything goes, but the choice of candidate cannot be made without consulting ‘the most progressive city in Italy’. So much so that he raises the stakes and reminds us that “Bologna hasn’t expressed a candidate for thirty years…”.
A message of criticism “of the method”, at a time when a two-way challenge is emerging between Michele de Pascale, mayor of Ravenna, and Vincenzo Colla, regional councilor for Labor dem.
“The new Democratic Party cannot drop a name from above, otherwise it is like the old party. It cannot be said that everything has already been decided. That this candidate or the other is in pole position. Because then it would mean that I neither participated nor to the name, nor to the program of ideas… and I would be a little worried.” For this reason the mayor encourages “participatory meetings and paths”, such as the Fabbrica of the olive tree program of Prodi’s memory, proceeding in parallel with the choice of the candidate “who can even arrive in July”. It is difficult to imagine a “third way” made in Bologna, but for the regional elections in Emilia-Romagna “it is important to say that not everything has already been decided and that together we can build”. While waiting to understand whether Lepore will be more actively involved in the choice of the candidate and whether Elly Schlein will meet him in the next few days (tomorrow the PD secretary will be in Bologna for the ‘Repubblica delle Idee’ event), the mayor outlines the ideal profile, “at net of the esteem for de Pascale and Colla, very valid people who could be regional presidents”: we need someone who has “the courage of Elly Schlein and the strength and desire to be among the people of Stefano Bonaccini”. The priority for the mayor “is that the centre-left candidate is a person willing to sit down with others to build a project together” discussing issues such as housing, the environment, work and sustainable mobility. The need to act quickly remains and there are rumors within the party of the decision to find a solution soon, perhaps within 15 days. For Lepore, in fact, “it can be closed already in July”.
Someone mutters that “the Bolognese name” could be his, but he takes himself out of the list of names: “I’m not running for the Region. I want to finish my work and run again as mayor, but I have to be able to have my say on the candidate” at Regional.
