After a long silence, Alessandro Zagni takes the floor, the great absentee from the Fratelli d’Italia electoral campaign for the municipal elections (present instead for the European elections), a party he joined a couple of years ago, becoming group leader in the municipal council. A silence that lasts from the dissent he expressed in the provincial coordination of Brothers of Italy in which – by majority – the green light was given to Alessandro Portesani as a candidate for mayor.
“This time too – he says – we lost the elections. And when you lose you have to stop and understand objectively what mistakes you made, so as not to make them again. If in the first round of the European elections 15,893 Cremonese voted for the centre-right but 2,007 of them did not do the same in the municipal elections, we need to understand why. How do we have to understand why, faced with the two-way choice of the ballot, a further 1,065 votes were lost for Portesani compared to the first round.
Voters are always right. Politicians often forget that their job is to listen to them and interpret their needs, not to close themselves in on their beliefs and always acquit themselves regardless.
In this mocking defeat there is a note of hopea: the people who identify with the centre-right area are the majority in the city. But this time (and actually last time too) on a municipal level we have not been able to dialogue and align ourselves with the requests of the majority of Cremonese.
Personally, comparing myself with many fellow citizens, I had perceived the strong desire that Brothers of Italy expressed a political candidacy for the leadership of our city. After ten years of mismanagement by the left, there was a desire for a clear change, interpreted by a political candidacy of the opposite sign. Moreover, in a context in which, even at a national level, Italians have expressed a preference for a markedly centre-right political government.
In its provincial coordination, on the proposal of the secretary Marcello Ventura, my party took a different direction, focusing on a civic candidate. Not knowing Portesani in depth, and based on the convictions expressed by the people of Cremona with whom I have always interacted, I disagreed with this choice. Consistently, without any controversy, I stepped aside, leaving Portesani the task of choosing his team and his interlocutors.
But the facts now speak for themselves: because a civic proposal, rather than broadening the perimeter and votes of the coalition (as in the theses of its supporters), it has the consensus of the local elections has been reduced by over 3000 votes compared to that of the European ones? Wouldn’t the political vote have been enough to win in Cremona?
In the end it went badly and we were defeated: the concrete possibility of managing this city was not seized.
But I am convinced that we can learn from mistakes. After the second time in a row, everyone in the Cremona center-right now has the elements to avoid falling into the same mistakes in five years. Regardless of who the local leaders of the coalition will be, I hope that politicians are able to really listen to the citizens of Cremona, because we are all part of the same community, of the living fabric of this city of ours, and the rule we have learned is that the Political decisions must respond to citizens’ expectations. This is the only recipe to win and restore a future of hope to our Cremona.” gbiagi
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