A League “with a smile” asks its people from Bari Matteo Salvini. The deputy prime minister and transport minister spoke at the ‘Volare Italia’ event organized by the party in the Apulian capital. “We have to put our heart and soul into it in the coming months. The June elections can change the history of Europe, just as the next American elections can change the history of the West,” Salvini said. “I hope that after the Brussels vote, no one says they don’t want Le Pen for the European government.” It is a Matteo Salvini who talks about peace, who returns to citing himself as a father, who cites the sun and the beauty of the South, freedom and work. At times he raises his tone with his typical vitriolic digressions, against cricket flour and certain magistrates, against “the no parties”, with an attitude that reveals the effort to get back on a good-natured path that he has set for himself.
“I hope that the elections in Bari do not slip. Certainly what is emerging, reading the newspaper reports, does not do justice to an extraordinary community like that of Puglia and Bari”. To those who asked him if the Municipality of Bari will be placed under a commissioner, Salvini replied: “I don’t know, ask Minister Piantedosi. I am the Minister of Infrastructure, I am responsible for bringing high speed from Rome to Naples to Bari”. However, what Salvini takes for certain is that the “parable” of Emiliano and Decaro in Puglia is over: “It seems to me that the parable of Decaro and Emiliano, I don’t comment on the judicial investigations, but is politically coming to an end, they’re beating themselves up. Pd and Cinque Stelle insult each other every other day. The added value is the centre-right, in Bari and Puglia finally, after years of divisions, it is unity, compactness”
And for the choice of the center-right candidate given that there are two months left until the vote “we’re talking about a few days”, and obviously Salvini hopes that he will be a Northern League member. “After 20 years we have every intention of returning to the helm of this extraordinary city”.
The home-saving law: “Social equity measure”
“We are talking – said Salvini speaking about his mini-amnesty law that now faces bureaucratic hurdles – 20 centimeters of a window, a bedroom for the child, an anteroom, a mezzanine, a veranda: everything that is inside the homes and that does not concern the villas. If someone has built a villa on a beach or in a seismic area or in a protected area, it must be demolished with bulldozers” but it is a law that “concerns small irregularities that are blocking millions of apartments throughout Italy, two-room or three-room apartments”.
The opposition speaks of this legislation as a yet another amnesty for electoral purposes. “This morning I had confirmation that the home-saving plan is good: the secretary of the CGIL Landini attacked and insulted me. If it doesn’t go well with the CGIL, it means it’s good for the Italians.”
European elections, “The EU was a disaster, it needs to be changed profoundly”
“With the vote in June we have the duty to profoundly change the European Union. We cannot run the risk of giving autonomy to the territories and then depending in our lives on the choices of the lords of Brussels who in recent years have made, or for ignorance or out of economic interest and subjugation towards other superpowers, the exact opposite of the Italian national interest and that of European citizens. This EU has been a disaster.”