One spoke of crematoria, and then apologized by saying that he was referring to the scorching heat in his area. The other mentioned the crematoriums again, in the hope that gays, or rather rich people… as he defined them, will end up inside them. Both speak of “a misunderstanding”, but there are videos and recordings that nail them to their shocking utterances. The latest case in order of time is that of Carmine Alfano, head doctor at Salerno hospital, and candidate for mayor for the centre-right in the municipality of Torre Annunziatawhere we will vote next Sunday.
Meeting some residents in the plastic surgery department, he launched into a series of clearly homophobic remarks. «In America, rich people are in fashion… — one among many —. Here men and women exist, binaries do not exist. Everyone in there, in the crematorium in Cava de’ Tirreni and we solved the problem.” But while he was talking, someone was recording with their cell phone. A sequence of audio with continuous attacks «to the rich… who also want important positions on television» and insults to the interns (they also report a climate of harassment) who arrived at the site The Express causing the case to explode. Last night he released a video, providing his version. “I have never made judgments on the basis of sexual orientation.” He speaks of «phrases artfully extrapolated in a context of joking… with the aim of hitting me a week before the vote». There were many reactions. Representatives of the Pd and M5S ask for “the immediate intervention of the competent ministers and the rector”.
Giuseppe Marasco, new municipal councilor of Fratelli d’Italia in Manfredonia, also speaks of misunderstanding regarding the sentences uttered during an electoral demonstration: “We are used to crematoria.” “I didn’t mean to make any association with the Holocaust,” he said yesterday, “but only to refer to the high temperatures in our territory.”
Marasco stated that apologizes “if his sentences have offended the sensitivity of many, with the widest reservations for my protection”. The video was made on the occasion of a demonstration in support of the candidate for mayor of Manfredonia Ugo Galli. When asked before the apology, Marasco however tried to deny it, saying that he was not the one who said that sentence and that the video had been manipulated. Which is why he had also threatened to file a complaint.
