Benito Mussolini and the fascist hierarchs, from today, cease to be honorary citizens of the island of Ustica. The City Council approved an amendment that intervenes on the regulations for this honor: if the person awarded the recognition dies, the honor also expires. It was the councilors of the majority – center-right – who created this formula. A move to avoid the revocation directed at Mussolini and the top leaders Roberto Farinacci, Pietro Lanza di Scalea, Alfredo Cucco and Cesare Mori, as the opposition instead requested with an amendment. «This puts an end to the artificial controversies and definitively fills a gap in the previous regulation – write the majority councilors – we expected a more collaborative and effective presence from the minority group but, once again, we take note of the warmongering and unnecessarily triumphalistic attitudes demonstrating little civic sense e fair play preferring to discuss and address the topics with phrases shouted and trumpeted on the media or social media in order to gather some more consensus to have more visibility and, in fact, abstaining when they should or could have agreed”.
The “collateral” effect
With this change in the regulation, however, it is not only the exponents of the Twenty Years Movement who will lose recognition of the island of Ustica. The Municipality will have to remove citizenship from all the other deceased people who had received it. Among these, the presenter Mike Bongiorno and Lucio Messina, inventor of the prestigious Golden Trident, a prize that some define as “the Nobel of the sea”. The winners of that award, over the years, have also automatically become honorary citizens of the island of Ustica, such as the American astronaut Malcom Scott Carpenter, Walt Disney, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Folco Quilici, Enzo Maiorca and many others. Now, together with Mussolini, they too will lose their honorary citizenship. «Today the majority led by the right-wing mayor Salvatore Militello, rather than proceeding with the simple revocation of the honorary citizenship conferred in 1924 on the dictator Mussolini, approved an amendment with which it is established that honorary citizenship ceases to exist when honorary citizens do not they are more alive – denounce the minority councilors Diego Altezza, Martina Natale and Maria Ailara -. We believe it is not appropriate. There are illustrious people, honorary citizens of the Municipality of Ustica who, even if no longer alive, continue to bring prestige to the island.”
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Tags: Ustica Mussolini longer honorary citizen Mike Bongiorno Walt Disney decline
