Pontida returns to its origins and sets aside foreign guests. After all, they joke from via Bellerio, considering that this year’s slogan is: “No foreigner passes,” someone could have misunderstood…
Jokes aside, Matteo Salvini made this identity choice to give the gathering in Bergamo a more “internal” character, where the League will be discussed with militants and supporters.
Read more Even Lilli Gruber is fed up with the broad field without ideas | Libero Quotidiano.it
Without foreign allies. A decision that the Carroccio leader himself shared with Jordan Bardella, president of the Rassemblement National, last week during dinner on Lake Como, held on the sidelines of the Teha Forum in Cernobbio. Salvini wants to focus, a note reads, «on the people of the League and its administrators» and on national priorities such as «security, pensions, cutting the cost of living.» But the choice not to have “external” guests is likely also a gesture towards the more critical area, embodied by Max Romeo and the governors, who have long been asking for a return to the Carroccio of the origins.
THE AGENDA
As always, the agenda of interventions is being finalized and will be until 24/48 hours before the event. The only things leaking from inside tell of a series of gadgets described as «very nostalgic.» And some tears will fall on the big lawn when the founder, Umberto Bossi, who passed away last March 19, will be remembered; he would have turned 85 on the 19th, when the “Pontida giovani” will take place. And it is not excluded that Umberto will also be celebrated there. It is also rumored that militants from the Center-South might wear T-shirts with the inscription “I stand with Matteo,” but in that case, these would be autonomous initiatives of the sections, as seen every year in Pontida.
The great anticipation will instead be for the list of interventions. That one, yes, drafted and weighed by Matteo Salvini himself. The deputy secretaries, ministers, and undersecretaries should speak, and then the governors who are asking for more collegiality in political decisions. Fedriga yesterday, speaking at an event, reiterated that «within the party there are no factions, but there is the will to strengthen the political action of the League, but this in total agreement.» And again: «We want to try to present at Pontida a manifesto that looks at our historic battles, but also relaunches all that action that can look at the productive world, from North to South, which is too often abandoned because maybe they are not battles that fill the squares.» And on the rumors that see the governors attentive to securing a place in the sun, he replies: «These are absurd things, which we have never asked for.»
On the table, however, is the position of the Senate group leader Massimiliano Romeo. Yesterday, speaking on SkyTg24, he explained that «the meeting that took place (and in which Romeo did not participate, ed.) was more of a truce in view of Pontida, because Pontida is sacred, so let’s lower the tones and try to arrive as united as possible before our people. Of course, the problems we raised remain.» And the “purges” that could hit him after Pontida? «I will continue my battle, regardless of the positions I have and will have.»
THE BIG QUESTION
From here a question arises: will Romeo speak from the stage? And if he does not, for fairness, will the counterpart in the Chamber Riccardo Molinari also not intervene? It is difficult to imagine, also so as not to break the truce that will be reiterated on Wednesday when Salvini and the governors should meet again to refine the manifesto of values to present on the big lawn and to talk again about the birth of the Northern association, requested by the territories and on which the secretary does not seem willing to give in.
Finally, in Pontida, there will also be talk about Islam and in this regard it should be noted that yesterday, the 25th anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers, in the entire Italian political panorama, only the League expressly spoke of Islamic terrorism. A fact that should make one reflect.
