Elections and referendum in Italy, several leaderships at stake

The third weekend of September is going to be a key moment, more than for the country itself (the government of seven regions is at stake, but none of them are as big as Lombardy, Veneto or Emilia-Romagna), for several of Italy's leaders. Indeed, although none of them is standing directly for any of the regions at stake, nor is he a supporter of the "yes" vote in the "referendum" for the "taglio" of the Italian parliamentarians, there are up to three whose political future may be greatly questioned by this election. We will see why. 

By far the most at stake is Matteo Salvini, leader of the Lega and the person who has been leading all the polls on voting intentions without interruption since September 2018. And the stakes are high because he could make a third mistake that would end up being fatal in the face of one day becoming President of the Council of Ministers. Indeed, Salvini already made a first serious mistake when he attempted to topple the government of which he himself was a member (he was then deputy prime minister and head of the interior) in August 2019.

The surveys were very favourable to him, but he did not take into account the fact that it was neither the time to bring down the government (with the State Budget already very close) nor that the PD, then a staunch enemy of the Five Star Movement, would be capable of allying itself with it. Even less so, Matteo Renzi (the "altro Matteo", as he is known in his country) would be capable of making a pact with a group (the aforementioned Five Stars) that had been fierce with him (including his family) to the extreme. But Renzi, a true specialist in reinventing himself, dared to make the pact that nobody expected, and the end of all this we already know: Salvini out of government, Prime Minister Conte heading a new government and the PD taking over half the ministerial posts. 

In spite of all this, Salvini was able to rebuild himself, and in the next election (for the government of the Umbria region, October 2019), he not only won, but also swept away. But at the end of January this year he made a second blunder in his attempt to snatch the Emilia-Romagna government from the centre-left: in addition to betting on a minor candidate (Senator Lucia Borgonzoni, who had entered national political life only a year and a half earlier), he could not think of a better way to do so than to play the leading role in an obvious episode of racism and xenophobia by knocking on the door of an alleged illegal immigrant, with all the cameras in front of him, just a few days before the vote.

It was then that a disunited left (including a generation gap) decided to join forces to prevent Salvini from taking over the government of Emilia-Romagna, and they succeeded. It is true that the centre-right did win in Calabria, but the head of the cartel (Joei Santelli) was not from Salvini's party, so Salvini could only be half-ascribed for dislodging the centre-left in this southern region. Now, with a very evident drop in voting intentions in the polls for months now (all to the benefit of the leader of the Brothers of Italy, the Roman Meloni), it is once again being played out in full and again, as in the case of Emilia-Romagna, in a region (in this case, Tuscany) that is famous for being "terra rossa" ("red earth", i.e., traditionally a fiefdom of the left).

And the most striking thing is that he is once again being played with by a candidate (MEP Ceccardi) who not only reminds us a lot of Borgonzoni, but is also politically a replica of Salvini: initiated in local politics, former mayor of a small town near Pisa, like Salvini at the time is trying to move from EU policy (she has been a member of the European Parliament since May 2019) to national policy. Ceccardi may surprise, but the centre-left is now even more united than it was last January, and the political "curriculum" of Salvini's candidate is ostensibly worse than that of the defeated Borgonzoni. And the most worrying thing is that her candidacy constitutes the umpteenth audacity of the Lombard leader, and he knows that, in politics, audacity is usually paid for dearly.

What is more, Salvini is beginning to be weakened even within his own party, as could be seen from the "referendum" on the parliamentary "taglio". Although he has always been a staunch supporter of the "yes" vote, the fact is that more and more of the "heavyweights" in his party are in favour of the "no" vote: the last one to do so was Attilio Fontana, governor of the Lombardy region. This is more than worrying, since Fontana was the one chosen by Salvini to preside over Lombardy and thus unseat Roberto Maroni, the "right-hand man" of the Lega's founder (Umberto Bossi).

So, if, on the one hand, Ceccardi does not manage to take control of Tuscany and, on the other, the "no" vote in the "referendum" is successful, Salvini's leadership will be questioned more than ever, even if other regions (Veneto, Valle d'Aosta, Puglia, Marche and Liguria) win the centre-right. And, considering that Salvini was already head of the elections in the last general elections (March 2018), an intense debate can be opened on whether another should be the candidate of the Lega for the next generals, which may not be called until even the beginning of 2023. 

Another leader who is playing a role in these elections is precisely "il altro Matteo" (Renzi). In his case, he is really being played for in Tuscany, even though he has a candidate for the Puglia region (the Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Ivan Scalfarotto). It should be noted that Renzi, unlike his rival Salvini, does not have the slightest chance at the moment of taking over the presidency of the Council of Ministers. His recently established party (Italia Viva, born a year ago) is struggling not to become an extra-parliamentary force, despite the fact that its fifty or so members of parliament (including nearly twenty senators) are key to sustaining the government coalition.

However, Renzi is not only Tuscan, but from 2009 to 2014 he was Mayor of Florence and since 2018 he has been a Senator precisely for Tuscany. Thus, if Lombard Salvini succeeds in getting Renzi's fellow countrymen to vote for Ceccardi MEP, Renzi will find it very difficult to continue in political life: his MPs, until now very faithful to the former Prime Minister, could return to the PD or leave for the Mixed Group, and Renzi would then have to say goodbye to national politics and... start thinking about becoming Mayor of Florence again (there will always be the possibility of becoming a senator for life, but this would be too early an end for a politician who will only be 46 years old in January). So Renzi is doing the rest to make the centre-left retain Tuscany: if he succeeds, then he will leave Salvini, with whom he has been openly confronted for months, very much in the lurch.

Finally, there is a third politician who puts his future at stake in these elections. This is none other than the current Secretary General of the PD, Nicola Zingaretti. Because, a year and a half after taking control of the main centre-left party, he is unable to get it to rise in the polls: he is closer to the Renzi debacle in 2018 than to Pierluigi Bersani's victory in 2013. It is true that Zingaretti has had the bad luck to inherit a PD bled dry by internal strife: first he experienced a split to the left in spring 2017 (split in the LeU party), and then came the split to the right by Renzi (Italia Viva).

But this does not hide the fact that Zingaretti, a person who is certainly affable and conciliatory, has a serious problem with his charisma, and his leadership could be called into question in a very important way not only if the PD loses in Tuscany and Puglia, but also if the "no" vote wins in the "referendum", since he has decided to join his fate to that of the Cinque Stelle Movement. Of course, in his case he has an advantage: to date, there is not the slightest sign of a change in the ranks of the PD, the group with the most "grey" figures in the entire transalpine political panorama. It must be thought that Renzi's rivals in the primaries of 2013 and 2017, and Zingaretti's in 2019, were literally crushed by them in those contests. But not for this reason, and even more so with time until new general elections are called, will voices and figures cease to emerge demanding a change of leader, and even to stand for leadership of this formation born in October 2007.

The fate of these three leaders will be decided between the 20th (when votes are cast until 11 p.m., as is tradition there) and the 21st (when the polls close at 3 p.m. for the final count). Sometimes it is not necessary to hold major elections (such as general or legislative elections, known as "political" elections in Italy) for a change in leadership to take place, but only minor elections are required for this to happen. The answer to all this, in just a few days.