Forza Italia, the emotion of the new boss Tajani. But the count starts immediately (waiting for the congress) – Corriere.it

what he would have liked, says Antonio Tajani in a whisper that merges with the voices of the dozens of force supporters who joined him at the presidential table to congratulate him after the his first report as secretary of Forza Italia,
when the curtain on the first national council without Silvio Berlusconi has just fallen and no one seems to be in a hurry to escape home or to the sea, also because there is a plane strike and a rich buffet is open to all. Let the founder’s will be done, whose position as president has just been carved in the stone of the Azzurri’s statute: in recent times, even from the bed of the San Raffaele, the Knight dreamed of transforming the 1994 plastic creature into a traditional party of the new millennium, structured on the territory, organized with an almost twentieth-century attitude. And there it is, the new Forza Italia marching towards the double appointment of the congress and then of the European electionswith a leader who from now on will be secretary and no longer president, and the liturgy is made up of votes with the arm raised and the proxy in hand.

The old guard

In the audience, the arms that moved unanimously yesterday are those of the modern and contemporary history of political Berlusconi. Secretary and group leader at the presidency table, ministers and governors in the front row and then, mixed in a room of the same hotel that Giorgia Meloni had reserved for the night of the last election, even those who had worked closely with Berlusconi in the past, from Valentine Valentini to Deborah Bergaminifrom Sestino Giacomoni to Gregory Fontana. Who is not dead or gone by tearing the tile is there. Including some rare examples of living eyewitnesses of forced archeology such as the Lombard regional councilor Sergio Gaddithe man who since October 1993 managed and filmed, in the Milanese studios in viale Isonzo, the auditions of the candidates selected by Publitalia for the electoral lists for the following spring.

The new purchases

Even the new guard speaks the jargon of classic politics, where relationships are measured in steps and never in parts, chunks, sentences. That passage by Tajani on the abolition of the office of president was decisive, he says Beppe Incocciatiwho played for Napoli together with Maradona and who praises his friend, the new secretary Tajani, not without recalling the old maxim of Nils Liedholm on the relationship with the reporters (At Milan, when they sent me to the press room, Liedholm eavesdropped and then said to me: Incocciati, are you going to the journalists? Here, remember to speak well of the coach). A little further away Claudius Lotito, barricade senator and president of Lazio: Not a dead party, let’s say a dormant party. Which now we have to fill with content, otherwise…. Alessandra Mussolini he flaunts a braid in his hair, which in Naples the braid brings good luck, you know that, don’t you?; a look that I would define as fluid; and also a clear political message, the right is already there, we must play the centre, we are the center of the EPP. There is a risk of going long and making the buffet cold, but the long list of those registered to speak is canceled with a stroke of a pen by an agreement of the presidency entered in the minutes by Licia Ronzulli and from the same subjected to the scrutiny of the assembly, which welcomes him with a Fantozzi-like scream.

The balances

In the room where lunch is eaten, the balance of power of the forthcoming congress can be seen plastically, extraordinarily unbalanced in favor of Tajani, who has the support of the Berlusconi family and who brought home the first round on the timing of the dispute (Before the European ), That the Ronzulli-Mul-Cattaneo wing he would have gladly dilated until after the vote. From the latter front, an alternative candidate will come out, probably a woman, who is Ronzulli herself or a card to be drawn in civil society; in any case, she will reveal herself in the coming weeks, in any case before the end of the summer.

The Fascina area

The young lions marked by the Fascina area brand — Alessandro Sorte, Stefano Benigni, Tullio Ferrante — they move like a phalanx and discuss cards, delegates to the congresses, of their specific weight in the Tajani front, where they aim to unite the forces of Lombardy and Campania. We won’t leave any pieces on the street, they say. A chunk of the delegates from the Centre-South actually got lost earlier in the day, delaying the start of the national council. Some anonymous enforcer bontempo, perhaps as a tribute to Berlusconi’s predilection for jokes, had created a living one, swapping the adhesive labels on the hotel lift. And so more than one had ended up looking for the national council at the door of the hotel’s renowned massage room, before being dispatched by the orderlies two floors below.

The Political Diary newsletter

If you want to stay updated on political news, subscribe to the newsletter “Political Diary”. It is dedicated to Corriere della Sera subscribers and arrives twice a week at 12. Just click here.