AFRAGOLA. The blood of the innocent victims of the Camorra and above all their example paid for with the sacrifice of their lives divide Afragola, the city that for half a century and more was under the suffocating dominion of local clans. On the one hand, the centre-right majority, which makes it a question of method; on the other, the opposition, which in the delicate budget session is trying to corner the mayor. The dispute ends with a no to the expenditure of around 10 thousand to be used in initiatives capable of reviving, among the younger generations, that collective memory which should be the cornerstone of the walls of legality.
The brawl
It happened that during the last municipal council dedicated to the examination of the budget law, the representatives of the majority chose to reject the amendment put forward by the opposition for the establishment of a prize aimed at students of Afragolese schools in memory of Alfredo Manzoni, a seven-year-old boy who died in 1975 after two years of very painful treatment, due to the consequences of being injured during an ambush by the Camorra to which his family was completely unrelated. Innocent victim of organized crime.
The majority city councilors also rejected two other amendments to the budget, proposed and voted only by the opposition. The first intended for events aimed on the one hand at remembering the Carabinieri Marshal Gerardo D’Arminiosilver medal for military valor, killed on the evening of January 5, 1976, in the central Piazza Gianturco, under the eyes of his six-year-old son, while he was buying him a bicycle for the Epiphany, on the other to remember the barbaric killing of two city councilors Francesco Salzano and Paolo Sibiliowho had interfered with the suspicious allocations of funds for post-earthquake reconstruction.
The clarification
A swipe at the thread of memory that caused quite a few embarrassments in Afragola. Mayor Antonio Pannone himself is trying to remedy the rejections of the three amendments, clarifying: «I confirm that the problems that emerged in the Council are in no case referable to the contents of the amendments, but are connected to a formal and methodological question, with the Cinquestelle who make amendments to a budget that they consider unreliable and part of the majority who declares that the amendments have not reached the budget commission”. To avoid any misunderstanding, the mayor adds and reiterates: «There is no need to generate confusion on these issues. I believe I expressed myself clearly during the City Council meeting. I am absolutely in favor of establishing a prize competition in memory of little Alfredo Manzoni, an innocent victim of the Camorra. Indeed, I confirm my proposal to name after little Alfredo one of the green areas of the large educational park that is being built in the property confiscated from the Magliulo clan, between via Arena and via Ciampa, in the same place where he was shot in the back on 4 November 1973, as I confirm to implement the initiatives aimed at honoring the memory of Marshal D’Arminio and the two city councilors killed on 10 March 1988 after a session of the City Council”. It’s not all. Pannone recalls being personally involved in the memory of the innocent victims of the Camorra: «One of the two city councilors killed, Professor Francesco Salzano, was my mother’s brother and every year his name is read in Italian schools and squares on the occasion of the Day of remembrance and commitment in memory of the innocent victims of the mafia.”
The oppositions
For her part, the Cinquestelle councilor Marianna Salierno, signatory of the three amendments, counterattacks: «I find the cynicism with which this majority has rejected our proposals to include institutional initiatives to remember the innocent victims of the Camorra in the budget to be approved. I would like to remind the mayor, the council and the centre-right majority who govern Afragola, badly, that the victims of the Camorra have no political color and that therefore a shared document could very well have been approved on the basis of the amendments that I had brought to the attention of the council ». And on the question of method you reply that the amendments had been formalized in compliance with the rules in the commission.
Same tune with Antonio Iazzetta, member of the Democratic Party and leader of the opposition, who underlined: «The documents contained the positive opinion of the Auditors and the Financial Manager. The rejection of those amendments, which would have involved a paltry sum, represents a slap in the face to the innocent victims of the Camorra, in spite of that construction of the culture of legality that is so much talked about.”
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