10 February 2007

Palermo’s Primaries

Leoluca Orlando has won 72 per cent of the vote for the Primaries of the Unione and he will be a candidate for the position of Mayor where he’ll be standing against the outgoing Mayor, Diego Cammarata. Leoluca has sent me this letter.

“We were right.

Dear Tonino,
We were really right to want to have the Primaries. We were right to insist that they are a necessary choice for the whole coalition so that they can be affirmed as a way of choosing candidates and as a way of giving the citizens a means of participating in political life.
Last Sunday, thousands of electors, in the whole of Italy, in Genoa as in Palermo, in Como as in Carrara, in Reggio Calabria as in La Spezia, in Lucca as in L'Aquila, queued up at the gazebos set up by our activists and promoters. Last Sunday, once more those who hoped for the failure of the Primaries were deluded. This applied to both those who are within and on the outside of the coalition. Today there are many who have to admit that the Primaries are being ever more affirmed and that they have to be recognised for their political worth. What counts most is the fact that the Primaries can be seen as a tool for mass participation, no longer or at least not only as a tool for “the living room” but a tool for “the street”; a tool that can allow everyone to speak and for everyone to express their views; not only for the neighbourhoods of the “well healed and intellectuals” in the city but also for the suburbs.
It has been a long and laborious process, frequently not understood and at times with obstacles placed even inside the coalition, but today we can say that we have made it. Now our loyal commitment will be to sustain our candidates (male and female) that the citizens have chosen with the Primaries; now our commitment must be to push our coalition to make the Primaries a sure and fixed method, by introducing them as a point in the agenda of the Government’s actions.
I am sure that we will still be together in this battle.
Greetings.”
Leoluca Orlando

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Politics