“So the morality and legality operation of the Apulian regional council ends, essentially, with the departure of the undersigned. This is the signal of discontinuity that they want to convey. I respond with a smile”. Speaking through a post on social media is Anna Grazia Maraschio, now former regional councilor for the Environment, replaced following the reshuffle carried out by president Michele Emiliano following the controversies of recent weeks following the investigations into corruption and politics which shook the regional and Bari political world. Serena Triggiani was appointed to replace Maraschio, close to the Italian Left.
“I thank the hundreds of people, administrators, citizens who are writing me certificates of solidarity – says Maraschio -, messages of indignation and pure bewilderment. I will not accept the position within President Emiliano’s staff, a hypothesis that was proposed and I thank you for the offer. Floating and sailing I have always chosen the second option in my life, with the wind at my back and free from constraints. Everything I have achieved has been thanks to the culture of work, the only one that permeates me and to which I respond. The same culture that I have brought within the department that I have been honored to lead, made up of professionals who I feel like thanking, together with my technical staff always at my side and the managers, the officials who followed my political vision. I don’t deny anything and I don’t deny that they were beautiful, intense years, full of satisfaction but also hard. I often had to fight in solitude, feeling like a white fly.
“In this whole affair – he remarks -, there is only one aspect that leaves a bad taste in my mouth: the abrupt interruption of a programming and planning process of the Department, which ranged from environmental and climate protection measures up to the establishment of a new housing policy that not only considers homes but also people and their well-being. An impressive amount of measures, of revolutionary policies, which these lines would not be enough to list. the risk is that the benefit could be for very few and the damage for many, many Apulian citizens. I also feel another belief: those who sow well reap the right ones and the sprouts will not be long in coming” concluded Maraschio.
Criticism of Emiliano’s decision came from the head of the Southern Italian Left, Nico Bavaro: “We are in for a farce. The plan is completed – he says – and finally they take away the Department of the Environment from Anna Grazia Maraschio, thus effectively canceling the presence of Italian Left and expelling the only true critical voice from the majority. I said it yesterday and I repeat it: evidently the Italian Left is uncomfortable and is paying the price for its freedom. At this point I would like to understand what Elly Schlein had with Nicola Fratoianni asked for an in-depth reflection on Puglia. Are you satisfied with Emiliano’s decisions?”.
“In about a year – Bavaro remarks -, in fact, Emiliano took away from Annagrazia Maraschio the powers over urban planning (housing plans, new buildings…), to give them to a regional councilor elected in Forza Italia and then transferred to his civic body; after a few months, with the complicity of the M5S they removed support from the former mayor of Brindisi, Riccardo Rossi, without any reason, then losing the elections against the right; a few more months pass and his civic body, CON, publicly asks for his resignation of Maraschio, who had ‘dared’ to demand that the electricity production plants were not located in the fields or on the coasts, but in industrial areas, on the roofs of buildings and beyond 12 miles from the coast” concludes Bavaro.
