by Marco Brunacci
The question is: “But are citizens asked to vote for the new mayor of Perugia or for the presenter of the next Sanremo Festival?”.
It all begins with the choice of the field of conflict between the two candidates: Ferdinandi’s highly skilled political strategist chooses (and manages to impose) the field of “empathy”. Which would be a sympathy extended to the ability to communicate, to affectionate gestures with people, to care for the image, to dialectical skills, to ease, to the use of the microphone and even to the propensity to dance (macarena).
The departure for Scoccia was an ordeal. Ferdinandi spoke of happiness and she spoke of roads, Ferdinandi of a bright future, Scoccia of a new master plan. A lunar debate.
Then Scoccia, after thinking that the mayor’s job is the streets and the master plan, understood that she had to change, that she was the one who seemed off topic. She loosened up, she too started to take the faces of the elderly in her hands, to give more vigorous handshakes and spread smiles everywhere. She decided to take the microphone and go off the cuff. To the projects for the streets she always added a reference to her love for the city. In short: due to her empathy she made her her, even if she didn’t dance the macarena, but perhaps it’s not a compulsory subject to be a mayor.
Let’s add: in all politics in the world today what counts is the image, the more or less constructed character, the ability to speak and communicate, the sympathy that it releases, therefore empathy. But it can’t just be this. If only that, instead of elections, next time, let’s do a casting.
So: empathy is fine, but now we want to know what skills the two young leaders base their candidacy on.
Citizens deserve to hear discussions on how the most complex and thorny dossiers of the Municipality will be addressed, one by one, and how the two plan to proceed with the boring daily administration, which however serves the citizens so much.
And the answer cannot be that someone else will take care of it, because this in itself is already a betrayal of the popular mandate, in a democratic electoral system that places the directly elected mayor at the center of city government.
So here is the question that becomes crucial in this final remnant of the electoral campaign: “Are the people of Perugia called to elect the mayor of the city or the presenter of the next Sanremo?”.
