Who is Vito Bardi, the Forza Italia general called by Berlusconi and confirmed governor in Basilicata

For Vito Bardi, 72, former deputy commander of the Guardia di Finanza and centre-right president of the Basilicata confirmed for the second term, an interesting but difficult political challenge opens up: holding together the demands of a winning alliance that has united the 'classic' centre-right with Carlo Calenda and Matteo Renzi.

A heterogeneous 'very wide field' of seven lists ranging from Forza Italia FdI, Lega, Udc-Dc with Rotondi-Popolari uniti, Azione (with Calenda's formation also militates since August 2022 the former democratic governor and preference champion Marcello Pittella ), Orgoglio Lucano and even includes exponents of Italia Viva ('in the last five years we have been in opposition in a very constructive way and Bardi has convinced us,' said Elena Maria Boschi) who will now have to pass the examination of the regional government. 'There is a good climate in the coalition, I am confident,' said the confirmed governor during the election campaign.

After a military career that began at the 'Nunziatella' school in Naples and ended as deputy commanding general of the Guardia di Finanza and studded with dozens of meritorious achievements, Bardi (born in Potenza in 1951 but raised in Fliano, four degrees, married, two children) made his entry into politics 'through the front door': in 2019 he was nominated to lead the centre-right array to win the Basilicata Region by Forza Italia leader Silvio Berlusconi, in agreement with Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni. Berlusconi presented his candidacy as follows: 'Our candidates are not professional politicians but people who have been able to demonstrate their ability to achieve their concrete goals. We have chosen a general, Bardi. He has defended legality all his life, he is a bulwark of legality that Lucania sorely needs'.

Also thanks to an exploit by the League, which took 19.15 per cent (which five years earlier had not even presented itself), Bardi managed to impose himself on the centre-left, which collected only 33.11 per cent of the vote compared to 62.7 per cent in November 2013. He thus became the first centre-right president in the history of Lucania's regional council (after the early Christian Democrat juntas and 24 consecutive years of centre-left juntas).

As his term of office approached, Forza Italia took his re-candidacy for granted. And the centre-right coalition, on 28 February, made the outgoing governor's run official. 'The united centre-right,' said the former Guardia di Finanza general on that occasion, 'wins. Good governance wins. Now it is the turn of our Basilicata: here the challenge is between a centre-right extended to the best experiences of the territory and a divided, quarrelsome left'.