It is an established fact that Gela did not miss anything
. It collects peculiarities that are difficult to find elsewhere, without any being able to give a sigh of relief to those who live there or to those who, due to an incurable (and incomprehensible) nostalgia. Another oddity must be added, taking advantage of the election eve, which will soon change the local administrative structures with a new mayor and a new city council.
The cone of shadow created by the countless missed opportunities and the stalemate of a poorly governed city now lets through a light, albeit faint, the same one that reaches the avid player of the famous betting slip: the hope on the eve of things that can change . In fact, those who believe in miracles offer the ticket, or the New Year’s Lottery, the power to make us come out of the shadows and start another life, to which we believe we are entitled.
The Municipality of Gela is afflicted, as everyone knows, by accounts in the red. A red so deep that it triggers the trap of financial collapse, which translates into a series of restrictive rules that heavily influence administrative management both in everyday life and in the planning of interventions and the provision of services.
Financial distress is not a tile that suddenly falls on one’s head due to ungrateful fate, but the result of careless administrative management and in some cases of waste, wrong investments, loose ends and debts. Indeed, the reference framework, taken in broad terms in this way, is almost similar wherever it has been declared with a provision from the (national) government authorities which removes an important slice of local autonomy.
In Gela, however, this physiological condition, which precedes the curatorship intervention, takes on meaning and becomes a case in itself. In fact, the municipality receives royalties deriving from oil extraction.
The journalist Franco Gallo, seasoned presenter of a local format called Agorà, asked his guests – the mayoral candidates – a simple yet disturbing question: “Can you explain to me how the municipality of Gela managed to enter the tunnel of financial collapse, since it collects ten to twelve million euros a year thanks to royalties?”
The question, in some ways disconcerting, despite its predictability, took the candidates by surprise (Di Stefano, Scerra, Franzone, Donegani, Cosentino), at least that’s what I heard. What should we have talked about if not the financial collapse at the end of the mandate, given that it will influence the choices and administrative policy of future city councilors and the next mayor? The answers appeared incomprehensible babble.
I listened to them in religious silence, hoping that sooner or later light would arrive on the causes of the collapse, and on the guidelines of the complex administrative machine, which will be forced to mark time for the supervision and control of spending by the accounting authorities. The causes, if well reported, could have offered the political opposition, present in the Gelese electorate, the correct reasons to punish at the polls the groups that administered the city.
On the other hand, good practices and intentions to contain spending for the future, if well described, would have offered useful elements for choosing the new administrators. Instead, the mystery of the financial collapse in the city that collects the royalties remained unexplained and inexplicable. Has the old saying prevailed that the best word is the one you don’t say? Is silence the sign of a habit? Or were they not informed? Political silence, protection of caste?
They certainly did not have the right to remain silent, not being before an investigating magistrate, but the obligation to inform. And they were wrong to adopt silence if this conscious attitude prevailed. I’ll hazard a guess, the worst: they didn’t study the issue of bankruptcy, which should have been at the top of their minds. With the exception of those who have been in the municipality for more than thirty years and should not have needed to study to know how public money was spent.
Among the mayoral candidates, two in particular could not fail to know: the former vice mayor, Terenziano Di Stefano, and Dr. Cosentino, who boasts 36 years of service at the peak of her bureaucratic career. Terenziano slammed the door, it’s true, on Mayor Greco, but before the noisy abandonment he should have had some ideas and reported them.
Unfortunately I cannot report the arguments adopted by the former deputy mayor, Di Stefano, because I did not understand anything about them, but I do not exclude that I must have some responsibility if after half a century of “profession” – reporting what others say – my notepad remained empty.
Candidate Cosentino’s response appeared hesitant and uninformed. I’ll summarize it quickly: I dealt with other things, I have no knowledge of expenditure documents, financial management was beyond my skills. The disruption? Old debts have increased over time; and then there is the tax evasion to calculate.
The mystery deepens thanks to Franco Gallo, the host, who evoked the outgoing mayor, Lucio Greco, recalling his lapidary judgment on the state of health of the account: “Gela is a virtuous municipality”.
Should we deduce that the municipality of Gela, recipient of huge sums (royalties), and endowed with virtuous behavior in managing expenses, was hit by the famous tile? The talk show should be studied in university classrooms, young people would understand what the world they are about to enter will be like.
Agora addressed other issues, in addition to financial distress. I would like to point out one: the sending of the list of candidates to the anti-mafia supervisory commission in order to prevent the unpresentable from being presented, an obligation regarding which all the mayoral candidates have shown great concern, promising that they would not shy away from this virtuous practice.
I’m not passionate about the issue. The unpresentables, as the word itself says, should not even be kept within the political formations by the parties, and instead they remain there and are well considered; they even manage to remain in the government and, if candidates, receive overwhelming support. I asked myself whether the pending charges, as they were once called, could put the conscience of the elders at rest and whether it wasn’t much more reassuring to be able to count on administrators who tell things as they are, for example regarding how the funds are spent public money.
I am not raising suspicions of malice, but questions about the good political management of the public good. I add some other considerations, which concern Gela’s specialty: bipolarism exists, but it is volatile, it escapes from itself.
The centre-right and centre-left take sides, but the parties of which they are made up seem to have run away from home. The Democratic Party has given up on a flagship mayoral candidate, FdI is distributed on multiple fronts, such as the League and Forza Italia. The 5S Movement comes out better, placing one of its creations at the starting line for the most important match, the union. Broadband patriotism thus replaces traditional party flags.
Is it a sign of the times?
Well, in contrast, that’s for sure, with the central populist orientation, where the Prime Minister has stripped herself of her surname so that the people become familiar with her name, as proof of her popular origins. Leaderism of the suburbs or with a South American flavour, appears with the patience and time needed, without renunciations: the post-twenty-year Flame warms the hearts, the bust of Mussolini the hierarchies.
Gela has nothing to do with all this?
We will find out soon, together with the rest of the Italians. In the meantime, let’s meditate on the silences of the mayoral candidates, their stammering, and on the redemptive faith in construction expressed by the mayoral candidate Cosentino during the Chiara Network Agora.
A construction saturated with the 110 percent bonus, with the help of summary reimbursements, gifts to condominiums and some staging, entrusted to a wise direction from Gela. Which would have conquered the podium on a national scale for efficiency and results achieved, achieving the record of renovations for which no expense was spared in the Macchitella district alone.
At our expense, of course; even those who dream of a house.
