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On September 20 and 21, elections will be held in seven regions for the renewal of regional presidents and councils, including Tuscany: a region considered, along with Emilia-Romagna, a “bastion” of the left. The center-left has been running Tuscany since 1970, that is, since the regional elections, without interruptions: with the PCI-PSI until 1992, then with various coalitions led first by the PDS and now by the PD. In 2010 PD candidate Enrico Rossi won with almost 60 percent and in 2015 with almost 50, beating the center-right candidate by more than 30 points. Today, however, as the polls also show, things have changed: in the last European elections the center-right was practically on a par with the center-left and six capitals are administered by the center-right (Arezzo, Pisa, Siena, Grosseto, Pistoia and Massa).
Electoral system and candidates
Tuscany is the only region in Italy that foresees the possibility of a second round in regional consultations. The 2014 regional law (the so-called “toscanellum”) provides, in addition to the possibility of casting a separate vote, the hypothesis of a double round between the two candidates who have obtained the highest number of votes without reaching 40 percent. In this case, the two most voted candidates will go on the ballot on October 4 and 5.
After the exclusion of Roberto Salvini – former player of the Northern League who had presented a list excluded by the TAR for a symbol that lent itself to misunderstandings with that of the Lega Salvini Premier party – there are seven candidates for the presidency: each one, except the main two, it is supported from a single list.
Outgoing regional councilor Tommaso Fattori is a candidate supported by the Tuscan civic list on the left; Tiziana Vigni (supported by non-vax movements) presents the Movimento 3V list, which means “Vaccini Vogliamo Verità”; Salvatore Catello is a candidate for the Communist Party of which he is regional secretary; Marco Barzanti for the Italian Communist Party. The 5 Star Movement candidate is Irene Galletti, outgoing regional councilor. The center-left presents Eugenio Giani, from the PD, and the center-right Susanna Ceccardi, from the Lega: they are the only two who have a real chance of reaching the presidency.
Center left
Eugenio Giani is a lawyer (he started his internship in the office of Alberto Predieri, Piero Calamandrei’s university assistant), he is 61 years old, he has published several sports, cultural and historical books on Tuscany, and he has had a long political career. It began in 1990, when – on the lists of the Italian Socialist Party – he was elected councilor of Florence, a city of which he was several times councilor and president of the city council. In 2010, he was elected for the first time to the Regional Council, which he has presided over since 2015. After joining the DP he became very close to Matteo Renzi, with whom he continues to associate.
Giani reached the candidacy without primaries: doing them, explained Simona Bonafè, regional secretary of the PD and European parliamentarian, would have meant “further dividing the party.” Within the PD there were those who pressed for an alliance with the 5 Stars, who had categorically excluded it and those who asked for an alternative to Giani, considered an anonymous candidate and incapable of compacting the coalition. In the end, on behalf of the party’s unity and the coalition itself, six lists decided to support Giani: Democratic Party, Italia Viva con + Europa, Tuscan Pride, Verde Europa, Sinistra Civica Ecologista and Svolta. However, internal divisions persist, especially on some issues.
For example, there are those who want the new Florence airport and those who don’t, those who want waste-to-energy plants and those who are against it. “I will build the new airport and not the new waste-to-energy plants,” Giani said. The airport, however, is one of the issues that most separates Giani from the Izquierda Cívica Ecologista, opposed to an expansion. The contribution of this list (and therefore its effective weight in a future regional government) could be decisive for the coalition, at least according to the latest polls: according to Sole 24 Mineral he would have 7.6 percent of the vote, behind the PD. And precisely the airport issue is used by opponents to accuse Giani of being a former party official, who has lived off politics for years: “I have a flyer from 1989 announcing the new airport,” said the center-right candidate. Ceccardi.
Giani’s program explicitly talks about peace, human rights, anti-fascism, the fight against racism and women’s rights “beyond stereotypes”, despite someone accusing him of sexism. “Ceccardi is tied to Salvini”, in fact Giani had said, a phrase that Ceccardi relaunched saying: “Giani calls me a bitch”. In his program, Giani says that there are “fields in which the work of the government led by Enrico Rossi must be continued and consolidated.” In favor of resorting to the ESM (although it is not its competence to decide), among the priorities it declares are schools, businesses and tourism, with the aim of reactivating the economy of the region, slowed down by the pandemic: according to the research institution regional Irpet, in the first 4 months of 2020 Tuscany is the Italian region that recorded the largest drop in industrial production (-21.9 percent) compared to 2019, after Marche (-22.6 percent). He also says he wants to “clean up the bureaucracy”, he wants to improve health care at the local level and he wants to collaborate with municipalities for the management and integration of migrants.
Not very charismatic by his own confession, he defends himself by saying that he is a good administrator. It is very present in the area, and has built part of its fame by participating in even the smallest events in the smallest towns (it is a “come tartine”, says Ceccardi); on the contrary, it has little presence in the media. He has not rotating doctor or communication companies that manage the electoral campaign: “I don’t like American, artificial communication, and it is clear that I don’t like Newism at all costs.”
Center-right
The center-right coalition supports Susanna Ceccardi. She is 33 years old, studied law but did not graduate, and was the first mayor of the Northern Tuscany League: in 2016 she was elected in Cascina, in the province of Pisa, a larger and more important municipality than is known nationally , of 45 thousand inhabitants -63, where until then there were only mayors of the PDS, the DS and the PD. In the book The people of Salvini. The Northern League between the old and the new militancy He wrote: «Let one thing be clear: call me Mr. Mayor. Mayor or simply Susanna like the people of Cascina who meet me on the street do. The “mayor”, as someone has already tried to call me when immediately receiving a raspberry, is a “boldrinata” that does not belong to me and that I despise ».
As soon as she was elected, the mayor strongly opposed the construction of a mosque in Pisa, saying she was concerned that Cascina residents of Muslim faith, who attended it, might join any extremist group, with negative consequences for the city. She was accused of not registering civil unions., planned and protected by law, published photos of Kalashnikov to support the law of self-defense, hosted the vigil of the “Permanent Sentinels”, a movement of ultra-traditional Catholics, and on the occasion of the international day against violence against women, explained to the feminist movement Non Una di Meno that “violence is part of nature” and that women victims of violence must learn “above all not to hunt”. Among his public premieres many will remember the one in which he defined Imagine John Lennon’s “a Marxist-inspired song.”
Since Cascina, Ceccardi has earned a lot of space in the party both regionally and nationally. Very close to Matteo Salvini (who calls her “the lioness”), in 2015 she ran for regional elections and was the first of those not elected. Instead, a year ago she had run for the European Parliament and, after Salvini, she was the person who had the most preferences. So this is the fourth election for her in five years (regional council, mayor, European Parliament, regional president).
Ceccardi relies on four lists: Lega, Fratelli d’Italia, Forza Italia and Toscana Civica, but his candidacy has also created discontent within the coalition. A few weeks ago a Republic Forza Italia Regional Secretary Stefano Mugnai said: “We didn’t want it. For a simple reason: where we win, we win with a moderate candidate.
Very active on social media and on television, she is considered a radical right, despite the fact that during the election campaign she tried to soften the tone (saying that her grandparents were communists). She defines herself as “postideological” and has spent most of her electoral campaign talking about migrants: “Enough of the immigrants who come to us to sell. Pontedera, at certain times of the day, doesn’t even look like an Italian city, ”he said, for example. It demands a reduction in the tax burden for businesses and families, energy self-sufficiency, a regional network of waste-to-energy plants, a policy for families and birth rates.
Polls
Polls say Giani and Ceccardi are very close in their consensus. The IPSOS survey published in the Corriere della Sera at the beginning of September he yielded to the Lega candidate at 41.5 percent and Giani at 42.6, with Irene Galletti of the M5S at 9 percent. The top two candidates, IPSOS says, have substantially the same level of notoriety (Giani 58 percent and Ceccardi 59 percent) and satisfaction (35 percent and 31 percent).
Among the lists, the Democratic Party occupies the first place with 29.5 percent of the voting guidelines, followed by the League with 22.9, Fratelli d’Italia with 14.1 and the 5 Star Movement with 9, 1 All other lists are below 5 percent. In general, the center-right lists (42.9%) outperform those of the center-left (40.2%).
In the Winpool-Cise survey published by Sole 24 Mineral on September 1, Giani has 43% and Ceccardi 42.5%. Irene Galletti (M5s) receives 8, while the other candidates obtain a total of 6.2 percent of the vote.
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