Pozzolo, Soumahoro and de Bertoldi. Life as a pariah in Montecitorio

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Aboubakar Soumahoro smiles, spreads his arms and, giving us a little pat on the neck, exclaims: “Me like Pozzolo? Fun!”. Then, he slips away through the corridor of Palazzo Montecitorio . The deputy, elected with Avs and a long-time member of the Mixed Group, was the first excellent person to be expelled from one of the Montecitorio groups (technically, let’s say it for precision, he suspended himself). He too – like Emanuele Pozzolo, expelled on Wednesday from the FdI parliamentary group for the New Year’s Eve shooting incident in the Pro Loco in Rosazza –, was dumped after an incident that he is convinced still needs to be clarified, but which in the meantime has earned him the unwanted stripes of pariah of parliamentary politics. Nobody talks to Soumahoro anymore. He, always very elegant, moves around the Transatlantic with white headphones firmly inserted in his ears. Always. At every moment. Engrossed in a call that seems eternal. As a trade unionist for agricultural workers, a clean face of cult left-wing television programs, Soumahoro had entered Parliament with the boots of a laborer, and it already seemed like a revolution. Then, shortly after, the investigation into the alleged exploitation of migrants in the cooperatives run by his wife and mother-in-law overwhelmed him. And those who had nominated him as an icon of the laborers - Avs, the party of Nicola Fratoianni and Angelo Bonelli, always ready to take on board pop faces of left-wing civil society to round out the electoral percentages - took a few moments to dump him, confining him to the lazaretto of politics. "Is it the cynicism of the parties?", we try to ask him again as we chase him around Montecitorio, but he, headphones in his ears, has already run away.

Will the FdI deputy alleged party shooter suffer a similar fate? Or will his former colleagues from Giorgia Meloni's party be more lenient? Looking at the other expelled, the first expelled from Fratelli d'Italia, Andrea de Bertoldi, one would say no. De Bertoldi was removed from the party in the summer of 2024 for a consultancy affair that his accounting firm in Trento had done for some companies. Consultancy that the probity magistrates of Meloni's party considered politically inappropriate. When he passes to Transatlantico, his former party colleagues tend to look the other way. They do not forgive him for what happened and suspect him of revenge, in the version of a journalistic source, against the party. Yet de Bertoldi, at least, has found a home again. He was supposed to end up in Forza Italia. He gave interviews to explain: "My next assignment can only be based on the values ​​of moderation, and liberal Catholicism". Then, after a long negotiation, Antonio Tajani’s party decided not to enlist him among its parliamentary troops. Shortly after, however, the Trentino deputy joined Matteo Salvini’s League. And it matters little that “the values ​​of moderation and liberal Catholicism” are not exactly the trademark of the Carroccio. For Pozzolo, however, this path also seems difficult. A League deputy says: “But how can we get him? He risks being just a nuisance. And not just because of his relations with FdI”.

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