BARI – In Bari, after having come close to winning the first round, Vito Leccese in the run-off with Fabio Romito will be able to count on the Bari center-left united again. There won’t be an official alliance but Pd, Verdi, M5s and the Italian Left find themselves on the same team after the split sanctioned by the candidacy of the lawyer Michele Laforgia. On the other side there is a centre-right who did not get above 29% in the first round but who is hoping for remuntada.
Last Wednesday Leccese, chosen by the Democratic Party, and Laforgia, supported by M5s and SI but defeated at the polls, signed a pact: on 23 and 24 June they will present themselves united after having signed a protocol on legality. If Leccese were to become mayor, there will also be room for the coalition led by Laforgia and which just exceeded 20% of the preferences. On the other front, Romito, who must recover a 19 point gap, already has the entire center-right on his side but in the last week he will also be able to count on the direct support and the arrival in Bari of seven ministers from the Meloni government. It is not excluded that the prime minister could also be in the city for the final rush.
«In full compliance with the agreements signed at the time between Michele Laforgia and Vito Leccese, the Convention for Bari 2024 meeting on Friday evening with Michele Laforgia, will loyally support the candidate Vito Leccese in the run-off, jointly promoting electoral initiatives in the decisive week that separates the run-off round on 23 and 24 June next”: this was announced by the electoral sign Convention for Bari 2024 which brings together centre-left movements and parties that supported Michele Laforgia in the first round of the Bari municipal elections. “It was unanimously agreed – they say – in the I hope that all the subjects present in the centre-left coalition can collaborate together with equal dignity, responsibility and commitment in the government for the next five years to make Bari more just, equitable, supportive, welcoming, green, a hotbed of culture, knowledge, innovation, and a beacon of peace From the outset, the Convention mandated those who worked on the synthesis of the programmatic proposals for Michele Laforgia’s candidacy to collaborate with the group that carried out similar work for Vito Leccese’s coalition, with the aim of bringing out the frontrunners. points of common commitment between Vito Leccese and Michele Laforgia, to arrive at a profitable harmonization of the programs presented”.
«The Bari community of universities and research, of training, of professional work, of cultural production, cannot fail to welcome with satisfaction the public commitment, undertaken by Vito Leccese and Michele Laforgia after the first electoral round, to share the responsibility political and civic to unite and lead to victory in the second round all the forces of the progressive camp that have supported them so far.” This was declared by 14 professors from the University of Bari who signed the appeal to vote in view of the run-off for the choice of the mayor of Bari between Vito Leccese, centre-left, and Fabio Romito, centre-right.
«It is a commitment – they say – to valorise, with equal dignity and in proportion to the consensus obtained, and to translate into the practice of the future city government all the ideas and programmatic richness that, beyond the different points of view of the two candidates , expressed itself in the electoral debate, and built a barrier of broad citizen will against the claims of a local right fully co-responsible for the program of anti-democratic and anti-Southern division of the country implemented by the parties that support the Meloni government. The project of differentiated autonomy, as well as in the economic, social and health fields, has heavy, unacceptable negative repercussions also in the university, scholastic and cultural fields. This desire – they conclude – cannot fail to correspond to an equally broad and responsible participation in the second round of voting in support of Vito Leccese”.
