Tacente, the tribune of Taranto

The Five Stars, why not, could vote for him. But the thing would not seem outlandish (on the contrary) to Francesco Tacente, known as “Checco”, candidate for mayor of Taranto who defines himself as civic and is running for a center-right that, on his name, split in the first round. And he presents himself, Tacente, armed with popular battles (for critics: populist), starting with that for the citizen’s income, a topic on which the candidate willingly spends himself and on which the M5S, in the first round, through the candidate Annagrazia Angolano, who has reached ten percent now spendable in two directions, argued with the center-left that supports Piero Bitetti. But will the Five Stars vote for her? he asks Tacente. “I hope many will vote for me, to change things,” he says, “beyond party membership cards. And I hope citizens will choose beyond ideologies.” A phrase that the M5S would like. “Citizens are free to judge and vote for the good of Taranto,” says Tacente. “Mine,” he repeats, “is a civic candidacy, without flags and without barriers. I repeat: we are ready to establish the municipal citizen’s income with the funds already allocated by the Just transition fund, but we also want to identify new investors.” And so, three days before the vote, the candidate – who obtained 26.14 percent in the first round, overtaking Luca Lazzaro in the center-right (who stopped at 19.40) – presents himself at the last electoral appointments knowing that, compared to Piero Bitetti’s 37.39, the ten percent of the M5s could come in handy. And he distances himself from labels. “Better Ta,” is his refrain on posters and flyers, where “Ta” stands for “Taranto” but perhaps also a little for the first syllable of his surname. “Better Ta”, also in the sense of prevalence at the ballot box, is what he hopes for in the meantime, the Tacente, a forty-two-year-old lawyer who is very well known in the city: the civic candidate who, in the first round, was liked by the League and less so by the others (who in fact had presented en masse, from Fratelli d'Italia to Noi Moderati, the defeated Lazzaro). Roberto Vannacci also liked Tacente, but his feelings were not reciprocated in his extremes, such as when, on social media, the general invited people to put an “x” on the candidate’s name, replacing it with the word “Decima”, thus evoking the “Xmas” and provoking the distancing of the civic candidate who proposed and proposes himself as dialoguing, not nostalgic and not ideological. Non-partisan, new compared to the veterans: this is how Tacente designs for himself a profile that is also suitable for the post-Grillini who, in the South, have not yet renounced their movement roots “neither right nor left and alternative to professional politicians. Tacente defines himself as “alternative to those who have been in politics for over twenty-five years and have governed Taranto having also held non-secondary roles, but with what results?”. “My only flag is Taranto”, he says, illustrating the points of his program, between ecological transition in the steel industry and employment crisis in the city of the former Ilva (“the ecological transition must be managed with responsibility and transparency”, he says, promising to also make clear to the government “that the environmental and health issue of Taranto is of primary importance and that its definition is decisive for any solution”). And if on the left (with Bitetti in the lead) there are those who contest Tacente's “divisive narrative”, on the right (where silence is maintained in view of the run-off) there are those who would have preferred calmer tones, in the direction of the undecided electorate. Meanwhile, the candidate's agenda (on which the right now converges with a formal alliance) includes the idea of ​​the "port as a hub, center of excellence and pole of attraction", says Tacente, and the triad "environment, health, work". "You have to show your face", is the concept. It matters little whether the candidate addresses what he calls the "left of no" or the national government. "Better Ta", he says, "and it's not a slogan. It literally means 'in the interest of the people of Taranto'".

More on these topics: