Antonio Decaro's call to Elly Schlein

Bari . "I want to be a free president, not a hostage." Antonio Decaro speaks to his mothers-in-law, Michele Emiliano and Nichi Vendola, so that his daughter-in-law, Elly Schlein, can understand. The center-left's natural candidate for the Puglia government has taken to social media to explain to "the citizens" the uncertainty surrounding his entry into the political arena. He remains undecided despite two meetings with representatives of the Nazarene Party (before mid-August with Francesco Boccia, and in recent days with Igor Taruffi).

The Bari MEP chose a post to respond to Emiliano and Vendola's media attempts to persuade him to accept their ("cumbersome") candidacies for the regional council . The engineer from Torre a Mare isn't having it and is choosing to take up the "renewal" battle, evoking the same tone that led Schlein to conquer the party in the primaries, seducing the voters at the polling stations: almost an "anti-bosses motion" waved in front of the leader. And who knows, perhaps even a warning regarding the upcoming Democratic Party congress.

Decaro's message, met with irritation in the Emilian camp, can be interpreted in two ways. He offers his support for Puglia, but only for a process that marks a break with the past, but he also reiterates his loyalty to the coalition should conditions prevent him from engaging directly.

"Now," Decaro writes, "I feel compelled to speak to the citizens of Puglia, to the mayors, to the activists, and to the friends who ask me: 'Antonio, what have you decided?' I don't have to decide anything. I am ready to run for president of the Puglia Region. I believe I have the necessary experience and a great love for this land and its people. But that's not enough." And here he reveals his plan: "To run, I must know I can truly lead the Region, with complete freedom, looking forward and not back. With the courage and responsibility to write a new chapter." Then he gets to the point: "I have sincere respect and affection for Michele Emiliano and Nichi Vendola, as well as a shared history of which I am proud and which I do not deny. But I want to be a free president, capable of fully assuming responsibility for my choices. I do not want to be held hostage by the decisions of those who preceded me. Puglia does not need a half-baked president." And finally, he almost previews his exit strategy for the people of Puglia (twenty thousand likes and hundreds and hundreds of comments after just a few hours): "It's a political issue, in the name of renewal. I know full well that no one is indispensable, starting with me. The work I'm doing in Europe is prestigious and demanding. If the conditions aren't right for me to return to Puglia, I will continue to work there, for my homeland, loyally supporting the progressive candidate for regional leadership."

Decaro's acceleration comes after he quickly earned praise from Goffredo Bettini ("Antonio is extremely popular, intelligent, and a great administrator"), but it fails to convince Emilian supporters . MP Ubaldo Pagano, very close to the governor, bluntly calls Decaro's position "a mistake," wondering if this dispute isn't a kind of "scrapping." The solution proposed by the parliamentarian is a collective decision entrusted to party bodies: "I hope it stops being a personal issue between the two and becomes an open debate within the Puglia PD membership." The buck passes to Schlein, who has so far been conspicuously absent.

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