Sanremo does not abandon the path of civility, as the center-right of the parties wanted (demanded?) by calling for change: on the contrary, it strengthens it with the victory in the run-off of Alessandro Mager, a new man of the moderates freed from the logic of the secretariats.
The criminal lawyer who takes up the baton from the florist entrepreneur Alberto Biancheri, obstinately civic-minded until the end, who became the longest-serving mayor in the history of the city (10 uninterrupted years). If the engineer Gianni Rolando, the antagonist, lost for the second time after twenty years (in 2004 he represented the PDL) and again at the hands of a candidate drawn from the so-called civil society, then Claudio Borea, much also depends by the move made by Mager (and his coalition) to look outside for the ‘something’ to close the gap suffered in the first round.
Support on programmatic convergences was guaranteed in the second round by Fulvio Fellegara, the CGIL trade unionist capable of re-aggregating the Sanremo progressive front, drawing from the reservoir of votes of his Generation Sanremo and the Democratic Party (while the Progetto Comune list slipped away).
And with voter turnout plummeting to 43.23% (on average less than one voter out of two), the difference was made by a ‘handful’ of votes: 460 out of 19,918 cast in total (the number of invalid ballots was high : 348). Mager built success in the vast agglomeration of sections of the ‘Pascoli’ school (a dozen of the 56 located in the area), granting his opponent only one partial victory, with the addition of Bussana (fiefdom of Alessandro Sindoni, study partner and champion of preferences at the head of Anima, the most voted list ever), of ‘Colombo’ and of via Volta; Rolando prevailed above all in Borgo, Foce, Coldirodi and San Giacomo; alternation in the two seats in Poggio, the other important district. All things considered, 9,977 votes for the winner (51.18%), 9,517 for the loser (48.82%).
Mager’s triumph should also be read as a sort of revenge for his (first) mentor, Sergio Tommasini who five years ago had challenged Biancheri, right at the head of the centre-right, losing soundly in the first round. After launching the ‘Anima’ project and making a coalition pact with Biancheri himself (Sanremo al Centro), thus converting to civility, he placed his chips on Mager and can now finally smile, together with the other protagonists of the lineup (Idea Sanremo and Forum Sanremo).
On the opposite front, Rolando does not hide his disappointment by going so far as to declare that he wants to give up his seat in the City Council, on the opposition side; the former mayor Maurizio Zoccarato, a supporter of him (Let’s go!), justifies the result with Fellegara’s endorsement in favor of Mager and urges us to start again on this basis for future electoral horizons; Senator Gianni Berrino (FdI) adds to the matter by talking about the transformism that developed between the first and second rounds, underlining that in a city with over 50 thousand inhabitants he decided a small difference in votes. Certainly, a new phase of analysis and reflections opens for the centre-right, after the third defeat in a row, from 2014 to today, in the historically moderate Sanremo, once a very safe fiefdom of the DC.
Now the Mager era begins, after that of Biancheri, who shared 2/3 of his long journey with the Democratic Party alongside the civic lists, before the diaspora. And as luck would have it, the Democratic Party is back in the game, in some way, driven by the Fellegara wave. The new mayor, supported by his four lists, must already think about the government team and also those of the sub-government, from the Casino to Amaie Energia. After the joy, the toasts and the hugs, it is immediately time for meetings and negotiations. Fellegara makes it known that he is not asking for anything, beyond respecting the programmatic commitments, but there are those who imagine him as a possible councilor and perhaps even deputy mayor. We will only find out by living, quoting Lucio Battisti.
