our correspondent in Padua
Some imagine he will be caught up in the vote. Instead. Luca Zaia made a scene. Two hundred three thousand fifty four preferences. Notes. Read more: records in regional election history. An exemplary case and now the newspapers have to make an effort to find someone who comes close to this astonishing figure, but not that much: Alfredo Vito, in Campania, in 1985; but he stopped at 121 thousand. With particular ferocity, Zaia thought back to her cryptic statement from a while ago, when every request she made ended in a no. Not for the third period. Not on the list. Not for his name on the symbol. No and always no.
“I’ll see if I’m a problem,” said the soon-to-be-outgoing governor, not at all happy to end up in mothballs. Therefore, the President armed himself with humility and good intentions. And he campaigned as a private soldier. “Now – he confirmed – everyone has understood what I wanted to say”. The League, surprisingly, has exploited and overtaken FdI which at last year’s European Championship reached 37.6 percent compared to the League’s humiliated 13.2 percent. Currently the balance of power has reversed: 36.3 for the League and 18.7 for the FdI. Our thanks go to everyone, starting with the new governor Alberto Stefani, who is now 33 years old, the youngest regional president in Italy, as confirmed by ecumenical deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, but the League’s performance is boosted by Zaia’s achievements. Yang has now taken further action: “If they let me on the list, we will get more votes.”
In short, they tied his hands, or at least they tried, but he won by distance. And at this point, the question arises: what will Zaia do with the legacy of the reputation he earned on the pitch? There are those who think he is capable of surpassing Salvini and even Giorgia Meloni. He, as usual, appeared pragmatic and concrete, preferring to talk about what would happen in the next few days. “I will enter the regional council as a simple councillor”, he explained. But then? There are several crossroads in the coming weeks: the seat that Stefani will surely leave vacant in the House, up for grabs in the by-elections; candidacy in May for mayor of Venice, a city at the center of world attention. In short, always Veneto and its surroundings. Without trying to make a takeover bid against the party he follows and which he criticizes. Zaia preached, if not a return to the original purity of the North, then a variant of the German brand: a League with two souls, one national and one local, on the German-Bavarian model. A hypothesis that was not well appreciated by the minister who injected a large dose of vannaccim into the party, causing dissatisfaction and disappointment in North Korea. “The general is not my benchmark – explained Zaia which, however, eliminates the possibility of factions – my house is the League, Zaia’s list will never be the current, I am against the current. If anything, the votes received expressed the people’s protest against the law prohibiting the third mandate, a wrong law”. Today the divisions in the party, which have been spreading rather than being announced, appear to be being healed in the name of collective victory. The league hit the jackpot, Zaia proved to be a solid popular leader and collected 10.8 percent of all votes cast in Veneto. He did not disdain bold comparisons: “It is said that when Napoleon took the field, it was as if there were a hundred thousand more men”. Will it stop between Venice and Padua or will it find a location in Rome? Maybe, not in the near future, but in the next legislature which is now close.
“I don’t have any chance – that was the answer – after that everything I read: the deputy, the mayor of Venice, the president of Eni, CONI and so on and so on, all that, if it comes, will only mature in a few months, closer to summer”. For now everything starts again at the original place but not as before. With a lighter armchair, but with heavier charisma.
