Municipality, centre-right with Corrarati wins in Bolzano

Claudio Corrarati is the new mayor of Bolzano. The centre-right candidate received 51.03% of the vote, while his challenger Juri Andriollo of the PD received 48.97%. This is the final figure with 80 out of 80 sections counted. In Merano, however, Katharina Zeller of the SVP won. The 34-year-old outgoing deputy mayor beat the outgoing centre-right mayor Dario Dal Medico. The real winner, however, was abstentionism. The turnout plummeted to 42.8% in Bolzano and 41.4% in Merano. Corrarati had, at the end of the first round, a 9 per cent advantage over Andriollo, who entered the ballot without any affiliations.

Corrarati, long-time president of CNA Trentino Alto Adige, defeated outgoing Pd councillor Juri Andriollo for the centre-left. Corrarati thus becomes the first centre-right mayor in the South Tyrolean capital, after Giovanni Ivan Benussi exactly 20 years ago, who, however, then failed to find a majority and went down in history as the 'mayor of May'.

In Merano, on the other hand, the gap was already wide, so much so that in the evening the centre-right civic candidate Dario Dal Medico had called Katharina Zeller to congratulate her while the count was still in progress. But with the counting completed, the numbers of the Svp candidate, who won the runoff in Merano with 57.4 per cent, are even higher. Dal Medico stopped at 42.6%. With Zeller, the SVP returns to lead Merano after 10 years.

Svp, the indispensable guarantor of a stable majority in the municipal council, declared itself 'blockfrei', out of the blocks, at the ballot, justifying the decision with the professional collaboration with Andriollo in the last legislature and with the fact that also with Corrarati 'there can be a fruitful collaboration in the interest of the city'. The blockfrei in recent days has, however, become a 'free-for-all'. A significant part of the South Tyrolean party, especially from the business and agricultural world, in fact, does not veil too much their sympathies for Corrarati, who is considered a moderate. The trade bodies of craftsmen and hoteliers have also openly sided with him. A hard anti-endorsement against the Pd's town planning councillor Stefano Fatto came from the Bolzano Gries civic committee, led by the former SVP regional councillor Roland Atz, 'so that the gentleman mentioned will not be entrusted with any tasks or competences that would allow him to perpetuate further misdeeds'.

The SVP, however, is a collection party, i.e. it gathers different souls: from social democrats to conservatives. And so it happened that some prominent members of the social wing openly sided with Andriollo. Former senator Oskar Peterlini in a short video message with a handshake with the centre-left candidate recalls the good collaboration with the PD and Romano Prodi. Former provincial councillor and Volkspartei grand dame Martha Stocker also has no doubts. 'I support Andriollo because values count,' she writes. 'I'm with Juri. Together for a Bolzano that unites and not divides,' Katharina Zeller, who is challenging the outgoing centre-right mayor Dario Dal Medico in the runoff in Merano, also said.