TARANTO – “From the next meetings of the City Council, my political action will no longer be characterized by a bond of absolute loyalty to the majority.” Signed by Michele Patano, municipal councilor of the “Taranto Mediterranea” movement.
This is not, however, an ordinary fibrillation in the civic-centrist coalition that governs the mayor Rinaldo Melucci. No, in this case, the distancing comes from someone who, in recent days, has been portrayed as the protagonist of an intimate encounter with a woman during the work of the Productive Activities commission to which he was connected remotely with his mobile phone.
This is a reconstruction that Patano has rejected from the beginning, declaring himself ready to take legal action to defend his image. “In recent days – it is reported from a note that the municipal councilor sent to mayor Melucci and the other members of the majority and which the Gazzetta has seen – I was the victim of a shameful media attack which, in addition to damaging my personal dignity and that of my family, has violated the dignity of the institution which – he states, addressing the other councilors – I represent together with you”.
For Patano, in fact, it is “unfounded” news, for which I would have expected a stance in the press in my defense from my majority colleagues and the mayor. Instead, there are those who, without being either witnesses or informed of the facts, but out of mere prejudice or perhaps political opportunism, have also secretly asked for my resignation or removal from the majority.”
Again in the same note, Patano adds that “I would not have expected a deafening silence on this matter”. Then he takes a step back two years and states bitterly: “It was immediately clear to me after a few weeks after the vote in June 2022 that this majority lacked that harmony that would make us all participants, close-knit as is done in a political group that should row in the same direction, and in which we support each other, but I never expected this deafening silence around this matter.”
Patano also fears that his character (he defines himself as good, generous, helpful and sociable) may have been misunderstood by his allies, instead, as an attitude of foolish servility or supine pandering towards everything. But I won’t deny that this affair, combined with other administrative and political ones that I and the political group I represent have had to “undergo” in these two years, place me – he says – in a situation of political reflection”.
