Edoardo Romagnoli
May 15, 2024
Giuseppe Conte’s is a race against time. The mission? Blowing up the TV confrontation between Elly Schlein and Giorgia Meloni before May 23rd, the date on which the two leaders are expected in the Porta a Porta studios. And it doesn’t matter if, in the meantime, he accepted Mentana’s invitation, together with Salvini, to participate in a discussion on La7 with all the leaders (scheduled for 5 and 6 June). He wants to blow up the one on Rai1 and for this reason two days ago he filed a bill to prevent parliamentarians and government members from running for the European Parliament. Not only. From the 5 Star Movement, the president of the Rai Supervisory Commission Barbara Floridia also tried to upset the situation. After the announcements of recent days, yesterday you sent a letter to Agcom (the Communications Regulatory Authority) and to the Rai top management. In the letter, the President of the Commission asked for reassurances on the correct application of the Resolution approved by the supervisory authorities last 9 April, and in general on the respect of equal conditions and treatment for all participants in the European elections, avoiding that one, or more parties, may gain undue advantages over other formations.
«Rai’s mandatory duty is clear – Floridia had declared in recent days – to prevent any undue advantage of some political forces over others, avoiding giving viewers a wrong perception of the electoral competition». However, Floridia was not the only one to write to the guarantor authority. Michele Santoro, at the helm of the “Peace, land and dignity” list, wrote to Agcom president Giacomo Lasorella to denounce the violation of the level playing field on TV if the Schlein-Meloni confrontation is broadcast. For Santoro there is also another problem: the dissemination of polls online without respecting the rules. «There is a clear violation of the level playing field with a format created for the occasion which does not correspond to either Five Minutes or Porta a Porta by Bruno Vespa, containers brought back in this period to the responsibility of the director of Tg1 and not modifiable in the campaign electoral”. In the meantime, a TV comparison has been skipped, but it is not the one between Elly and Giorgia, but rather the one that was supposed to see Matteo Renzi and Antonio Tajani face each other.
There won’t even be a “duel” between Matteo Salvini and Giuseppe Conte, despite Vespa’s invitation and the League’s approval. Conte does not want to accept and, in hindsight, he is not entirely wrong. The leader of the 5 Star Movement aims to establish himself as the third contender, the troublemaker between Meloni and Schlein. It is no coincidence that in recent days he has asked several times for the duel to be expanded to three. He knows well that if he accepted Salvini’s invitation he would risk participating in the “series B” competition. An interesting note in this whole affair is the silence of the Democratic Party. The Nazarene’s only problem has always been the meeting place. Vespa was considered too biased, but in reality once we had the necessary reassurances from the host of Porta a Porta everything went back to silence. Indeed, someone spoke. Debora Serracchiani who underlined how «the comparison is appropriate, necessary and also beautiful». If there really is an employment problem on public television, the term TeleMeloni is now known, why not ask that the discussion be extended to other political forces too? Why didn’t the Democratic Party guarantee plurality? In doing so, the risk is that of being seen as someone who fights in the name of everyone just to obtain something for themselves, something “beautiful”.
