Antonio Decaro: the PD's preference recordman and the rising star of future leadership

"If I were to say 'vote for Antonio' at the very least I would have to pay royalties to Totò's family, and I can't afford that". Considering how it went for Antonio Decaro in the polls, actually not taking the pledge even for fun was wise. The former first citizen of Bari, who with a total of 495,918 preferences is the most voted candidate in a constituency after 'Giorgia', built his success starting from his city (186,367 votes) by far outstripping even the President of the Council (59,830). In the Apulian capital, the Partito democratico touched the record percentage of 45.66%, while FdI stopped at 23.62%. For a Dem secretary accompanied by the voters' favour, the supremacy is certainly not in question, but Decaro's personal follow-through gives him a leading role in the party.

This was 'unexpected and beyond all expectations' by the protagonist's own admission. 'I started to feel the weight of it already last night, it is a great responsibility. It also comes from the commitment of these ten years of government,' Decaro explained in an interview commenting on the results. "It means that the PD has managed to interpret people's needs and give some new answers to some new questions, such as healthcare or work." Overall the political force led by Elly Schlein gets 27% of its votes from southern constituencies (South and Islands), a higher figure than in 2019 precisely thanks to Antonio Decaro's extraordinary performance. But in general, at the national level, the reformist candidates did better than those of the secretariat area, starting with Stefano Bonaccini (389,284) and moving on to Giorgio Gori (210,000), Dario Nardella (100,000) and Matteo Ricci (84,000). Which makes the component's prospects somewhat more open to the future in terms of leadership, when it comes.

In Apulia, the electoral success of the outgoing mayor of Bari has driven the election result of the Pd, which becomes the first party in the region, more than six percentage points behind Fratelli d'Italia. On the other hand, the M5S and Lega, which had been first and second parties respectively in the previous elections, collapsed. Of all, the most disappointing data is that of abstention, which is still growing: turnout was 43.61%, below the national average of 49.84%. The Pd's good affirmation is also reflected in the mayoral elections in Bari, where the candidate supported by the Dem and Greens, Vito Leccese, goes to the ballot with the centre-right candidate, Fabio Romito, leaving at home the other candidate of a part of the left and M5S, Michele Laforgia. In the European elections, the Apulian Pd exceeded 33.5% of the vote (in the previous European elections it was 16%) with Decaro going over 351,000 preferences when the leading candidate Lucia Annunziata stopped at 'only' 70,000.

Reading the numbers, the turmoil caused a few months ago by the investigation into vote-swapping in the city has in no way shaken the leadership of the administration. The investigation that gave rise in March to the Viminale's decision to appoint an access commission to assess possible criminal infiltration referred to an alleged interweaving between the mafia, politics and business and to an attempt to influence the vote in the last municipal elections (May 2019) won by the centre-left that supported the outgoing mayor Antonio Decaro. The infiltrations allegedly also reached the Bari urban transport municipality Amtab, which was placed under judicial administration for a year. On 26 February, investigations by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate led to the arrest of 130 people linked to the clans and, in particular, to the arrest (under house arrest) of a city councillor elected with the centre-right (and then switched to the centre-left), Maria Carmen Lorusso, and her husband (in prison), lawyer Giacomo Olivieri, a former regional councillor. At the press conference to illustrate the investigation, Bari's prosecutor Roberto Rossi was keen to rule out the involvement of Mayor Decaro ('when you talk about electoral conditioning you run the risk of thinking that everything is polluted. There has been a partial and circumscribed vote-pollution activity within the municipalities on which the administration has been able to respond', and 'we have ascertained the insubstantiality of Mayor Decaro's involvement'). To return a few days later to the concept on the occasion of the signing of a memorandum of understanding at the City Hall, thanking the municipal administration of Bari for the 'great cooperation given to the Prosecutor's Office to achieve important results on legality. The municipal administration has been constant in helping the investigators to free this city'.