Salvini: "Whoever leaves here ends up nowhere, our strength is the troops"

The administrators and militants of the League who met for three days in Rivisondoli have no doubts: the party line decides Matteo Salvini. And the federal secretary, summarizes the deputy secretary Claudio Durigon closing ‘Ideas in motion’has at its disposal “a prepared ruling class”, capable of “planning the country” in unity, because the League, he states, repeating the words spoken by Luca Zaia, “is one and indivisible”. Salvini cashes in and in his speech (which lasts over an hour) explains that his party is “a family, not a barracks, even if someone calls me Captain. There are generals, marshals, colonels, but our strength is the troops, it is the people”, and anyone who has decided to take other paths “is a fool”, also because, he warns, “history teaches that whoever leaves here ends up in nothing.”

Words that some interpret as a ‘red card’ for Roberto Vannacci

A doubt that the secretary himself clarified shortly afterwards: the reference was to the two deputies who joined Forza Italia at the beginning of January. And the former general? “I’ll see him next week”assures Salvini who encourages his men to commit to the membership campaign which will start on February 1st with theobjective of exceeding +34% made last year. At the banquets that will be set up throughout Italy we will also talk about the referendum, to convince as many voters as possible to vote yes to the reform. Here the warning he sends is to “those who usually grumble and protest. If he stays at home on 22 and 23 March, he and his children will have the responsibility of having an immobile and unchangeable country”.

The real goal to be achieved on the issue of justice, he reiterates, however, is the civil responsibility of magistrates: “If they make mistakes, they have to pay like everyone else”. To the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, who announced in Rivisondoli that the approximately 60 new measures that will make up the security package being studied by the government will arrive in the Council of Ministers in the first week of February, Salvini asks “even more free hands, in compliance with the limits of the code, for the girls and boys who defend our security in uniform”.

April 18th

Leafing through the agenda of upcoming appointments, the secretary announces that the date of April 18th is marked in red: “I’ll wait for you in Piazza Duomo in Milan where we will rally patriots from all over Italy and all of Europe in the name of protecting our values, of Western culture. It will not be a square against, but for”, he underlines. The secretary also reminds those who listen to him of the 2027 political deadline: “Let’s prepare to work hard, we need determination, a spirit of sacrifice, clear ideas, a smile. A delicate period is approaching for everyone.”

His objective, he says, is not only to re-elect “all parliamentarians”, but also to “bring new energy from all over Italy to Rome for our battles. We must play as a team”. He delivers a jab at the press, at the newspapers that for years have been “predicting the change of the secretary of the League: the only thing that has changed – he says – is their publisher”. And to those who criticize him for his recent meeting with an exponent of the British far right, he finally reminds that his party was “the only one in Europe to vote against the gag law on the basis of which tomorrow they can decide what can and cannot be said, what complies with the law and what does not comply with the law… Will I be able to meet whoever I want, if I want to have common battles with someone?”.