Forza Italia, the Fascina blitz: tensions over the new regional coordinators and provincial commissioners

ROME. The appointments under the sign of Marta Fascina. On the eve of the funeral of the founder Forza Italia try to imagine a future and give the semblance of unity. But we are at a weak truce and not at peace, with the unknown factor of Marta Fascina, the quasi-wife of Silvio Berlusconi, whose loyalists were officially promoted yesterday in a meeting that caused much discussion.

Berlusconi, the state funeral today in Milan. DIRECT

Come on Italy is boiling. Two meetings of the party bureau were scheduled for yesterday, a body whose composition many do not even remember. The first meeting had as its object the approval of the budget, a legal duty. The problems arose in the second half of the meeting. The participants, leaders, group leaders and ministers, nominated the new regional coordinators and provincial commissioners. Mere ratifications of decisions taken with the president still alive, which however caused discontent, as a matter of opportunity, but also of merit. These are appointments that have created strong tensions between the force currents in recent weeks. The problems had manifested themselves both at the local level, starting with the replacement of Alessandro Cattaneo as commissioner of Pavia, and at the national level, in particular for the choice of the head of membership, Tullio Ferrante, a deputy close to Marta Fascina. The only political intervention was that of Tajani who limited himself to recalling how these are Berlusconi’s wishes. There was no clash, but an opportunity was missed to send a peacemaking message within the party. A question, therefore, is circulating in these hours: does Fascina still count?

Messages of unity arrive in the declarations, inaugurated on Monday by Tajani during his visit to Washington. Licia Ronzulli, group leader in the Senate, does not accept being depicted as the head of a critical current: «We have a duty to pay homage to its history, to the sacrifices it has had to make and to the attacks it has had to suffer, continuing along the path he plotted. If we were to divide we would be doing him an injustice.’ “None of us think that Forza Italia is destined to disappear after the death of President Berlusconi – says Nazario Pagano, president of the Constitutional Affairs Commission of the Chamber -. If this creature of his were to be abandoned now it would be like betraying him.’

“Let’s go ahead because it would make no sense to interrupt such an important political path,” says Paolo Zangrillo, minister of public administration and coordinator of Forza Italia in Piedmont.