editorial
twelve o’clock, May 8, 2021 – 09:29 am
of Paul Macry
FNow we will not have to wait for the Kondratiev cycle to end, the long wave of forty-sixty years with which the Russian economist defined the slow passage from recession to growth. But sometimes the suspicion comes. Naples seems trapped in a Kondrat’ev cycle. It falls lower and lower, inexorably. It goes through all the stages of decline, the maintenance disaster, the failure of public services, the financial collapse. And citizens just have to look at the succession of absurd events, dream images, unequivocal signs of the wrath of the gods in a sort of hypnosis. Like that Galleria della Vittoria, the main link between east and west, which was closed eight months ago and which eight months later remains closed, deserted, darker than a sepulcher.
Not even the approach of October, the washing of the elections, the prospect of a new maximo leader seems to be able to console us.
Because it is true, the elections are now a stone’s throw away, but who would bet a dollar in the hole? The deaf busy working on candidates and lists by the experts does not bode well. Names and alliances, intrigues and cunning, knives and poisons fall from the sky, as if it were the rain of frogs that upsets the town of Magnolia. So let’s browse the daisy, or rather let’s take a look at the frogs.
Starting from the right, yes, from the right. After all, after decades of Rose and Orange misrule, it would be fair for them to try. On paper, with what the others have been up to, they would have prairies of consensus. But they are notoriously few and malmostosi. They hate each other. They stammer about non-existent knights. They are ignored by their Roman leaders. And in the meantime, however, imperceptibly, in dribs and drabs, they seem to move towards a singular candidate, the most bizarre one could think. Not an entrepreneur with medals, not the last VAT number that survived Covid, not a neo-EU intellectual and not even the healthy Nostalgic, the robust Reactionary, the real Bad. No, the melancholy diaspora of the right seems to be moving towards a magistrate, a prosecutor in permanent service. It sounds unbelievable but it’s true. They dream of a toga for Palazzo San Giacomo. Just in a city that cries ten years of a pm mayor. Just when the judiciary seems to have hit rock bottom. Right now that even Davigo and Travaglio are blushing.
And the others? The others also don’t seem to be doing very well. They too would have many chips to play on paper, ministers, former ministers, institutional positions, spoiled for choice. But the dish cries. Nobody turns out. The young Democrat leaders spend their days listening to the beats coming from the national leaders, they know very well that they will not decide the candidate. The Naples dossier will mix with that of Rome, Turin, Milan, a ballet to make you shiver. And it will mix with the aims of the Grillini allies, albeit reduced to a dirty dozen, albeit on quicksand, without the leaders of 2018, without the lawyer yet, without the masses of the vaffa, without even being able to count on their walk that is gone mad with pain. A confusion, the sum of great weaknesses, empty shells, existential anxieties. And, worse, the vigilant attention of the Quirinale, which would like everything but the election of a new president of the Chamber. A good connoisseur (it seems to have sent to say).
But then, in the dead gora mentioned above, the governor breaks through without blemish and without fear. So, a bit like for Mourinho’s Roma, it’s fun. In fact, the governor does not think twice about mixing up. And to begin with, he gathers his more or less loyalists, puts together a cheerful gang that it would take too long to detail, identifies the candidate in a nutshell. And he threatens the party to do everything on its own if anyone ever tries to put a spoke in the wheel. He wants to expel the pentastellati from the playing field, and so far how to blame him. But he wants much more. The real scalp is Naples. He finally wants to conquer the capital, he who continues to reside in the Principality of Citra. And, once he gets his hands on the Royal Palace, he wants to present himself as the leader of the autonomy of the regions and also, en passant, as the leader of southern autonomy. So his battle is not trivial, it is fought on several fronts, not so much against the young leaders of the Neapolitan Democratic Party, which he does not even consider, but against the Nazarene, the company, the old comrades he hates, the equally hated grillini. And then, however, also against the government, the centralists, the technicians, the generals with feathers, those who would like to impose ordered vaccinations and close eyes. The impetuous master of Palazzo Santa Lucia moves in complex orbits, where it is possible to clash with Draghi himself and where it is possible to meet Salvini for a coffee. Play across the board. But now the important thing is Naples. If he managed to seize the throne of Naples, we would see some good ones.
In short, the pre-election scene seems lazy and silent, like the Galleria della Vittoria, but frogs fall from the sky in droves. Our heroes are agitated, they faint in terrifying feuds, they are consumed in Byzantine pretacticians. And while the Names – the blessed candidates in pectore – are silent, they limit themselves to saying that they are “perhaps” available, if anything they ask for unity from their political side (all nonsense phrases), their sponsors or crypto-sponsors repeat the litany of names that is needless to talk about it, which is too early. There is plenty of time, Senator Ruotolo candidly declares. Programs come first, they say. Indeed, worse, they say that first “an idea of Naples” must be worked out. I got it? “An idea of Naples”. As if in a city where the rag of an administration no longer exists, where no one governs anything, where the main road axis can remain blocked for months and months due to sheer neglect, where splendid monuments crumble, as if in this Naples it needed “a ‘idea”. And not, simply, the promise to return to live in civilization.
P.S. I forgot. Among the candidates there is also a well-known mayor of the nineties. But I am not talking about it because it is not in pectore. At least he put his face on it.
May 8, 2021 | 09:29
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED