Matteo Salvini aims to arrive on Sunday at the Pontida event without protests and with the colors of the League clearly visible within the government. “No foreigners allowed” is the slogan chosen for this edition, the first without the founder Umberto Bossi, who died on March 19. And without foreign guests, except for a message expected from the Spanish Abascal of Vox, about Ceuta.
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Salvini’s priorities
“At the center of the day will be the issue of pensions, youth, and security. We will not talk about philosophy or anything else,” explains the League secretary, focusing on concrete issues to energize the League supporters, who are dealing with plummeting polls and internal party struggles. The red lines set by the allies will prevent the League leader from claiming from the stage, as he would have liked, the strengthening of the “Safe Streets” operation, increasing to 10,000 the soldiers guarding streets, squares, and stations. But Salvini will reiterate the proposal to overcome the Fornero law with the possibility of retiring at 64. And he will relaunch the fight against the “pseudo-green ideology of Brussels.” A battle that led him yesterday to announce that in the next Council of Ministers he will bring a decree to postpone the “senseless stop” on Euro 5 diesels throughout 2027. Not forgetting the goal of extending the car tax exemption beyond 80 Kw.
The showdown with the governors
The gathering in the town in the Bergamo valleys, which last year saw Roberto Vannacci among the protagonists, comes after weeks of tension between the secretary and the party’s northern faction. Regarding the requests of the Northern governors (Attilio Fontana, Massimiliano Fedriga, Maurizio Fugatti, and former Luca Zaia), who have been pressing for months for a collegial management of the League and more space for northern issues, the secretary has expressed willingness for a truce, drafting together a programmatic manifesto with greater attention to the North, autonomy, and territories. And sharing responsibilities ahead of the elections. But with him in command. So there does not seem to be much room for the request, reiterated by the governors in the last face-to-face on Thursday in Milan, for a federal party structure (modeled on the Bavarian CDU/CSU alliance, launched by Zaia at Pontida 2025). “We have such important international challenges that we cannot think of having parties within parties,” Salvini closed the door again yesterday speaking on Mattino 5.
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The association for the North
For now, the League governors will therefore focus on establishing a Northern association within the League to relaunch federalism and the demands of the productive classes. “The Northern association? We will make it, like the Central and Southern ones, because each territory has its needs,” confirmed the president of Lombardy Fontana, who in recent weeks had not ruled out the need for the secretary to step aside.
The schedule
The fear of whistles and protests characterizes the hours of the eve. The schedule of interventions is not yet official. It is not clear, for example, whether Zaia, no longer governor, and the group leader in the Senate Massimiliano Romeo, among the critics of Salvini’s national-sovereign line and author of the book “Making the League – Agenda for Renewal,” which upset the secretary, will take the stage. So much so that rumors of his replacement as leader of the League senators have become increasingly insistent. Rumors later denied by deputy secretary Claudio Durigon, plenipotentiary for the center-south, who declared to Sky Tg24: “Romeo has been the group leader, is the group leader, and will be the group leader. He is working well, then regarding the method of how something can be changed in the League, I see it differently from a book. We will also have a calm discussion with him and it will be at the Pontida confrontation that we will do it in the right way to do well for the party.”
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