To summarize the scandal and the resignation of the vice president of the Regionwith Renato Schifani taking over from Luca Sammartino even in his role as Department of Agriculture, Gianfranco Miccichè clicks on the computer and extracts the epitaph phrase from an interview with Leo Gullotta: “I’m honestly afraid of this establishment”.
Have you, former number one of Forza Italia in Sicily, become an opponent? Does he speak like Schlein or Fratoianni?
“Do you see how the newspapers on the island have headlines? They describe Schifani to Agriculture speaking of a “showdown in the centre-right”. There is no water and they seize on a department as a source to use to settle internal accounts. The Region is reduced to this.”
Do the councilors grab money? There will be some councilor who survives.
“The paradox is that one or two are saved. And that one of the two is Sammartino himself. Operating. Able to solve problems. Oh God, Miccoli also scored goals and was the best, but then he talked to the mafia. Obviously, the presumption of innocence always applies. And I hope for a soap bubble for Luca. But things are now going badly even with the “best”».
Have you been in dialogue with Sammartino since he joined the League?
“We discussed many concrete problems to be solved.”
What do you think of the League in Sicily?
«A party like any other? And I don’t know if it can be called League anymore. There is such a movement of deputies, city councilors, aspiring councilors. All coming from DC, Forza Italia. It is no longer the party of territorial battles. Calderoli, the last Mohican in the trenches for financial autonomy”.
Is it the Sammartino model?
“He too is Pd, Forza Italia, Centro… they are all like that.”
Bad moment for Sicilian Autonomy?
“It could be useful, but it hasn’t been needed for a long time. I don’t defend a past with a thousand responsibilities. But you can’t be a councilor or president if you haven’t read a book. I have been to Schifani’s house. In the living room, in the study. Not a book. Apart from one Vespa, in a corner”.
Regret for the past?
«I cannot deny that the best years of the Region were those of Cuffaro as president. With me as CIPE undersecretary we carried out a hundred interventions in a hundred municipalities on the island. Unemployment halved.”
For many, these were the years of the mafia inside the Palace.
«The mafia was there in the Settata years with Gioia, Lima and Ciancimino. For the rest, Cuffaro’s affairs are God’s problem. Not mine. But the Region worked. Was there a problem? Cuffaro called and I sent a highly trained programming technician”.
She sweetens it.
«Then misunderstandings, poisons, hatred. Today, unfortunately, we are at the highest level of poverty of ideas and culture. From Musumeci to Schifani. I happened to ask for assistance to be able to reach the Cretto di Burri with a road, one of the wonders of the world, in Belice, the area of the ’68 earthquake, but they don’t even have an idea of what it is”.
Do you think that the councilors for cultural heritage or tourism don’t know? They have just set up a Telamone in Agrigento and organized the General States of Cinema in Syracuse.
“Horror. I get scared just reading the programs. At the Teatro Massimo they are killing off the superintendent Marco Betta, a composer who arrived with Leoluca Orlando after the excellent Francesco Giambrone. They have to put one of their own.”
Were Orlando’s friends that you contested at the time of Berlusconi and Dell’Utri better?
“Much better, in some cases. He remains my opponent. But no one can take away Orlando’s credit for having transformed Palermo from a mafia city to a capital of culture.”
What happens at the Regional Assembly?
“We meet once a week. After ten minutes, they stop and summon the group leaders. They return after an hour and postpone the session for a week.”
What to do?
“I don’t know in front of a government with councilors with 30 thousand votes, like Sammartino, and others placed only because they are friends of Meloni.”
You drove at the time of Berlusconi’s friends.
“Not even in his golden age did the Cavaliere telephone to arrange friends, as happens from Musumeci to Schifani”.
Do you have a bad tooth with them because they have put you in a corner, without a party and without positions?
«I was absolutely against Schifani’s act of submission, chosen by Ignazio La Russa who has nothing to do with us. A Roman arrogance. Without this act of arrogance, the president would be someone else.”
They could reverse the recurring accusation of being a friend of Dell’Utri.
“It would have been very convenient for me to say that I was unaware of his reports, but I don’t believe what was attributed to him. I heard from him every day, but the only pressure call he made to me was when, by mistake, we had reduced the funding to the INDA of Syracuse due to the Greek tragedies. For twenty years I was the absolute head of the major party and I never received a suspicious report from Marcello.”
But it turned out that, at dinner with Renzi, one evening in October 2021, you spoke about a possible pardon for Dell’Utri.
“What a mess. I then asked Renzi if he was willing to vote for Berlusconi as President of the Republic. Dell’Utri had served his sentence and was acquitted for the State-mafia negotiation. I didn’t have to ask anything. Yes, Renzi and Berlusconi had talked about it in previous times. Another story. What’s the point of talking about it today?’
You were questioned about this by the deputy prosecutor of Florence Luca Tescaroli.
“Twenty pleasant minutes. Intelligent.”
What do they reproach her for?
“Nothing to me. The newspapers discover a contact between two politicians and make a headline about it. But those who do politics talk, probe, question, ask. Or have contacts become a crime like the crime of influence?
Tags: region friends friends ideas culture Corriere .it
