The mayor’s dual outlook: between Democratic Party podiums and a Hamlet-esque, prophetic book

Starting afresh from Genoa, from the City Council and the common good of the ‘city that cares’ – to use what has become a heartfelt refrain for the Democratic Party mayor Silvia Salis – beyond the crowds gathered outside the city limits (the Festa dell’Unità in Emilia) and right in the city centre (the now legendary spring DJ set in Piazza Matteotti with Charlotte De Witte). Starting afresh from Genoa after a summer of widespread uncertainty within the broad political camp (primaries or no primaries?) – that is, from the very place where the PD president and MEP Stefano Bonaccini is indirectly inviting her, Salis, to stay and ‘do well’ where she is before trying her hand at anything else (‘if you do well where you are, then all doors will open for you’, said Bonaccini), starting with the primaries that many would now like to lock away in a drawer, never to be reopened (perhaps) ever again. But what does it mean to start afresh from Genoa, where not only was the mayor elected, but she was also shielded from any possible rush forward or retreat, despite the persistent murmur all around of ‘but what will Silvia Salis do’? A Genoese Democrat says: ‘The mayor has a dual horizon’. And so: whilst on Salis’s long-term horizon looms the book with the Hamlet-esque, prophetic title “E’ già domani” (to be published in October by Feltrinelli), the short-term horizon (tomorrow evening) features the local Festa dell’Unità with the mayor on stage, perhaps interviewed alongside (albeit at a distance) the other Democratic Party mayor whom quite a few on the left would see as a viable candidate in the political arena currently dominated by the Democratic Party secretary Elly Schlein (in Genoa today, with Salis acting as host) and by the Five Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte (in Genoa on Thursday 3rd — with the mayor ready, according to those who know her, to ‘listen’).

Meanwhile, she will be speaking tomorrow, focusing on the issues of pressing concern to the city, from transport to waste management. But sources in Genoa also suggest an intention to tackle a subject that is both very long-term and very short-term in nature: security. This is an issue that brings Salis closer to Manfredi and Alessandro Onorato, in line with the civic stance of the broad coalition, and which distances her from the Meloni government but also from the left, which is using security to distinguish itself from the right. In the middle of August, in fact, from a Democratic Party podium near Reggio Emilia, Salis delivered a sweeping indictment: ‘I don’t know to what extent the message has got across that centre-left voters like feeling unsafe,’ she said. ‘I maintain that I have been talking about security from the very first day of my election campaign. But security isn’t about slogans; it’s about investment, which is lacking today. The police force is short of more than 10,000 officers compared to the planned strength, and the local police have lost 12,000 officers across Italy. Yet mayors are being asked – even for political gain – to guarantee security in huge, complex cities such as Rome, Milan, Naples and Genoa.” That is not all: Salis, narrowing her focus to include Bonaccini as well, will travel to Modena on Saturday, where – with the former governor of Emilia urging her to do well where she is – she will take part in a joint panel with the Democratic Party governor of Puglia, Antonio Decaro. Not before, however, having ‘listened’, as has been said, to Schlein and Conte from the PD stage in Genoa, with the Democratic Party’s Senate group leader Francesco Boccia and former Democratic Party minister Andrea Orlando in dialogue with the former Five Star Movement prime minister. Whether Salis will say anything to Conte remains to be seen. What is certain is that Orlando and Conte will discuss the elusive alternative government, which currently hinges on the electoral law and on variables that are either unpredictable or highly predictable from one day to the next. ‘Accelerating the programme’ is the watchword of Orlando’s supporters, which Salis would ‘welcome’, says a local PD representative, ‘particularly with regard to citizen engagement, as was done during the referendum on justice’.

But Salis has already spoken out on this: be careful not to think you’ve already won, because “young people won’t automatically vote for the left just because they voted ‘no’ in the referendum”. It remains to be seen whether the mayor will comment on the M5S’s political positioning within the broad coalition, given that the landmines in foreign policy have yet to be defused (there are those who would like, on 3 September, at all costs, to resurrect – in the presence of Salis and Orlando – the Conte of the Conte II government, the more ‘pro-European’ one). In the meantime, the roadshow is set to resume tomorrow in Genoa, also to avoid having to restart from the primaries that Salis had previously branded as “divisive” and to which, however, in the run-up to Ferragosto, the leader of Italia Viva, Matteo Renzi, has once again linked her as a possible “suitable candidate” (albeit one to be “helped” rather than “dragged along”).