Lombardy regionals, Bossi dictates the line: no councilor of the Northern Committee is a candidate with Moratti

The project of the former regional councilors expelled from the League and founders of the Northern Committee who wanted to present an autonomist list to the Regionals on 12 and 13 February in an anti-Salvini key is waning: a list designed to support the candidacy of Letizia Moratti, former deputy governor and former regional councilor for Welfare, who presents her own civic list and is also supported by the Third Pole. After the no Umberto Bossi and a catchphrase that lasted weeks, today it was the former regional councilors themselves – Antonello Formenti, Massimiliano Bastoni and Roberto Mura – to announce that they will not present any list and that they will not even run as candidates on the Moratti civic list.

“After speaking with the honorable Umberto Bossi and with the MEP Angelo Ciocca, we have decided not to run as candidates in the next regional elections” – the former Northern League members explain in a note. Fourth, Frederick Lena he had already made it known that he would not reapply in any case. “The decision – the three clarify – stems from the fact that there will be no list of the Northern Committee in the next regional elections, given the impossibility for the committee to present itself in support of the outgoing governor Attilio Fontana. This is Bossi’s will and we we respect it to the end just as we have always respected the line of the founder of the League. We could take other paths and apply under other flags but it is a hypothesis that we have decided to discard as it would not be consistent with our political history”. The negotiation that had been admitted by Letizia Moratti, who had confirmed “the opening of a dialogue” with the anti-Salvini dissidents, therefore failed. A prospect that had sparked immediate criticism from the Lombard Democratic Party who had accused Moratti of having abandoned his moderate profile.

In reality, it seems clear that an internal division among the Bossians weighed on the final decision of the four former Northern League members. On the one hand, the former Lega MP Paolo Grimoldi, he was also one of the founders of the Northern Committee, which confirmed its trust in the outgoing governor re-nominated by the centre-right Attilio Fontana. On the other, MEP Angelo Ciocca is in favor of presenting a list in support of Moratti. So it fell to Umberto Bossi to tip the balance to one side. After all, it was Fontana himself who made no secret of having received a guarantee from the Senate that he would vote for him. While the clash within the League, with the minority of the party contesting the political line of the federal secretary Salvini, accused of being too non-Northern, seems to be postponed until after the vote.