Calabria, the Reggio electoral test: Forza Italia against National Future

Who would have thought that safe Calabria, Forza Italia's stronghold, would become a stress test that worries the centre-right? Vannacci effect, one of many. Because on 27 and 28 September the citizens of the single-member constituency 05 of the Chamber - Reggio Calabria are called to vote for the deputy who will replace Francesco Cannizzaro in Parliament, the Italian elected mayor of the city. In other times a game won by default, today a first experiment to understand if Futuro Nazionale can really give the majority a hard time.

The unexpected element is called Domenico Giannetta, he has the reassuring face of a doctor and long political experience in the ranks of Forza Italia, with which in 2021 he was re-elected to the Regional Council with over 10 thousand preferences and for which he was group leader until the end of August, when he was chosen as a candidate for the national Camera da Futuro. With a double whammy: farewell to the party he represented and the move to those who, from the right, are eroding votes from the coalition. Giannetta, in fact, undermines the centre-right candidate, Fabio Roscioli, not just anyone: he is the party's national administrator, historic lawyer for Fininvest and highly esteemed by the Berlusconi family. Running together with them are Frank Benedetto, an expression of the wide field, and Francesco Toscano, supported by the symbol of Sovereign Popular Democracy.

The immediate words of the Italian governor Roberto Occhiuto, which certainly were not gentle, gave the measure of the seriousness of the rift. First he decreed Giannetta's exit from the majority in the Region and then he thundered: «My regional government has nothing to do with whoever chooses Roberto Vannacci». In the crosshairs are the "mercenaries and traitors" who ride "populism".

The president of the FI senators, also very close to the Cavaliere's children, Marina and Pier Silvio, took things further in an interview with Repubblica on 9 September: Vannacci - is the thesis - «in the state he is the fifth column of the left in parliament as in the by-elections in Reggio Calabria. From this point of view it is similar to the AfD which in Germany looks to the rossobruni who support Sahra Wagenknecht."

It was the general himself who evoked the German vote in a completely different sense from the pages of Il Fatto, proclaiming that «Reggio Calabria will be our Saxony-Anhalt. We aim to win. Forza Italia has nominated a Roman lawyer who has never seen the Strait, catapulted there by the Berlusconi family. We, however, have a doctor who has been involved in politics there for years and who everyone knows."