The network does not forget. In the last few hours, a video dating back to 2019 has been circulating on the web again in which, during the party for Matteo Salvini’s victory in the European elections, the centre-right candidate for mayor of Bari Fabio Romito is alongside the councilor candidate on his civic list Nico Moretti and the latter performs more than once, caught up in the euphoria of the moment, a Roman salute complete with an outstretched right arm. Not once but several times.
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Five years ago, after the unprecedented success of the League in the European elections, when the current deputy prime minister and minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini had reached an unexpected 34%, the members of the Bari party had decided to celebrate in a dance club. For the occasion, Romito improvised as a DJ to the tune of “Urlando contra il cielo” by Luciano Ligabue. At his side, in the foreground of the video, is the candidate for the municipal council Nicola Moretti (who is currently third in the Romito Sindaco list, with 513 preferences) who, taken by enthusiasm, raises his outstretched arm several times in what is unmistakably a Roman greeting. No one bats an eye or tries to censor the gesture.
The video was published on the local newspaper Repubblica and there was no shortage of comments and indignant reactions from users. «Roman greeting or not, Bari and the people of Bari with a Northern League Mayor get nothing right. Worse than a Northern League member there is only a Southern Northern League member. Write it down in your mind!”, “But leave it alone, he doesn’t even know the difference between fascism and the league, the latter is just pure banality, the former is everything that was worst in our country”, or again with a certain sarcasm «Don’t worry! Northern League members and fascists will remain on the margins of a city like Bari.”
The controversies before the vote
Several exponents of the center-left had expressed their views on the ambiguities of Fabio Romito’s position before the call to the polls. The main accusation leveled against the centre-right exponent was that of not having presented the symbol of his party in any list supporting him. The symbol of the League has in fact disappeared, and the gesture has been interpreted as a desire to avoid presenting itself to the more moderate voters of the centre-right as an exponent of a party which in recent months has claimed the credit of having brought the bill of Law on Differentiated Autonomy. The Calderoli bill has seen an outcry especially in the South, with the political class worried that the approval of the law could bring serious consequences to the South, in terms of resources and development. A theme, that of Autonomy, which Fabio Romito has always glossed over, stating that it will not have harmful consequences for the South.
