our correspondent in Padua
“Don’t be fooled, if you believe that justice will not succeed, vote Yes. After all, the government will come to the end of the legislature, this will be another record that goes against those who say we will not last long and that we will isolate Italy.” As Giorgia Meloni finished speaking, Michael Jackson’s Man in the mirror began on the stage of the packed Gran Teatro Geox in Padua.
There is a country reflected in the “Veneto model”, from health care to business, claimed by the center-right in unified demonstrations in support of candidate Alberto Stefani, who is the overwhelming favorite over his challenger Giovanni Manildo, a representative of the “greedy and selfish” left who according to Meloni is “self-referential and closed in the living room, so they ignore those who work as Romano Prodi, who has a university chair in the field, says”.
Governor Luca Zaia, who has just completed the pre-agreement on Autonomy signed with Minister Roberto Calderoli on Civil Protection, Profession, Social Security, Public Finance for Health Services) does not claim his 15 years of success, but gets straight to the point: “I am proud to have restored the dignity of my people”. And the audience got excited. But we must vote for Stefani to “win decisively” even against the enemy’s abstentionism, because we know that the Venetian people will not be fooled by the now extremist opposition “which would rather hope for a social uprising, support a financial storm and rule from the ruins than be an opposition in a developing country”, as the prime minister underlined. Forza Italia leader Antonio Tajani also thanked the Venetian healthcare system (“Thanks to you my daughter recovered from a serious illness”), if here “it takes 30 days for a neurological visit and in Campania a year” it is not the government’s fault, Meloni underlined.
The controversy over the alleged court of boatos in Rome did not reach the diligent Veneto, Meloni recalled that the reform of the premiership was created to avoid “playing the Palace behind the backs of the electorate”, and it was about the reform and its benefits that the Fdi leader made a speech for almost an hour. Such as judicial reform, thanks to Carlo Nordio of Venice “after decades of failure”, a measure that would modernize the country and make trials fairer by “strengthening the judge’s impartiality, freeing him from the burden of the current”, relaunching the benefits regarding “political affiliations that also reward those who are guilty in condemning innocent people like Enzo Tortora”. Meloni made an appeal to the NO party masters who continue to take the lives of Giovani Falcone and Paolo Borsellino: “Don’t touch these two heroes, don’t exploit them but kneel before them”.
The economy is the backbone of the action of the center-right which for 30 years is not an “alliance of convenience, held together by bad glue, but a political community of ideas and values”, “leading the polls after 3 years of government”, which “Europe must see as the Financial Times says”, which has imported 80 billion foreign investments, with a controlled spread, employment has never been higher for three years, especially among women with the highest figures ever (“equality is not a thing council but prevents a woman from choosing between family and work”) and “a million more permanent jobs without a Citizen’s Income” also thanks to resources invested in birth rates, businesses and families, with a tax collection record that “grows without harassing honest people in dire straits” but focuses “on unhealthy competition between open-ended companies that the left does not see”, because “it is not the State that creates jobs or wealth”, but “powerful companies”.
To those in the current opposition who “take money from workers and give it to the banks, even with measures like the Superbonus”, the center-right responded by asking for contributions from credit institutions aimed at “cutting taxes also for 800 thousand Venetians”, with a “holy house first and beyond ISEE” while some insisted on “late communist prescriptions like patrimonial prescriptions”. There is more money in salaries for doctors who are Covid heroes and teachers, with the CGIL of “Landini, the fifth column of the opposition” (Tajani hiss) not signing on and only going on strike at weekends, “otherwise the revolution cannot go ahead”, the prime minister quipped.
Not far away, the Catholic Alberto Stefani smiled at his supporters and quoted Carlo Acutis (“don’t photocopy, get out of social media”), also to Maurizio Lupi of Noi Moderati and Antonio De Poli (UDC) he was the right person to start with, “we sent the young generation to rule while the left let them loose on the streets”, recalled Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, who praised Zaia, proud of the security measures that allowed those in Veneto to “clean up the houses that occupied and arrested Nigerian drug traffickers”, while the fight against immigration – recalled the prime minister – marked “-60% landings and +50% repatriations”.
