Avellino
Modestino Iandoli is one of the few local politicians who has never changed course following the wind that blew. On the right he was born, on the right we find him. From Almirante, with the municipal councils which at the time were held in the great hall of the Dante Alighieri middle school, to Giorgia Meloni, who took upon herself the responsibility of not having succumbed, once again, to the sirens of transformism, those who they take parties as buses to get on because it’s a good time for another personal business to get done. From Customs to the former Moscati hospital the walk is not short. There’s plenty of time for some controversy and a few pebbles.
Did you expect such a sad end to the council of the capital municipality?
«No, although I was very clear about the administrative disaster that has taken place in the Palazzo di Città in recent years, I could never have imagined this epilogue. But let’s be clear, I’m not interested in the judicial question. The point is only political and has to do with what has emerged over the course of these weeks, it has to do with the systematic claim to govern in secret, without publishing the resolutions and making the decisions disappear, it has to do with that PC disappeared, with the competitions rigged. I would never have imagined that Avellino could sink into such a deep abyss”
The scenario created is an opportunity, Fratelli d’Italia has chosen the identity of a symbol. After many years, he actively returns to the fray. Do you think you’ll get to the run-off?
«We are the only centre-right on the field and the centre-right has the duty to aim for maximum results everywhere. Brothers of Italy chose the only possible line, worked until the last minute for the unity of the coalition and my own candidacy was made available to the entire center-right with the availability, publicly expressed by the undersigned and by President Fruncillo also found the synthesis on another name but always in a political scheme. The point is that beyond the Brothers of Italy and the UDC itself, which in any case maintained a clear profile, the other forces were not in a position to accept our challenge, they had no alternative to hiding their own inconsistency in a scheme of fake civility, with the contribution of the former mayor’s main allies and several former councilors and outgoing majority councillors. The other side of the same coin represented by Laura Nargi. Here, therefore, we have the centre-left in front of us, the so-called broad field, or rather our usual adversaries. We know who they are and we know where they are. So there’s the centre-right, there’s us. In the middle of the swamp of the indistinct, the center of the party”
What does it mean to present yourself as a man of the right today? What is the horizon for the city?
«Mine is the story of a man of the right, of a social right, never sectarian, guaranteeist and legalitarian. But today I am the candidate of the first party in Italy, of a government force, which expresses the Prime Minister, which addresses and interprets the requests of a large part of the nation. Of course, we are the ones who have never governed Avellino, we are the only ones who can say we have nothing to do with the disaster of these years, with the rubble among which we move, but also with the disasters of the decades and the previous decades. Because we must never forget that Festa and his colleagues are children of the Democratic Party, of the centre-left, of the system of power that has always governed Avellino. We are the only ones who can speak with credibility about change and discontinuity, we are addressing all the centre-right voters, but also all the people of Avellino who are looking for a proposal for discontinuity, who believe the time has come to move on. And I say to them that if we were to be rewarded at the polls we will not hesitate to involve the best energies of the city, to include the best Avellino. Without vetoes, without blood tests, for the good of the community”
Avellino is outside the high speed connection.
«Avellino is outside the high-speed connection and does not have a station. We have wasted many years in chatter, chasing proclamations and promises, but it is completely clear that we cannot and must not give up. We need to push for the electrification of the Salerno – Avellino – Benevento line, we need to give the capital station its function and centrality back, and we will certainly not do this by cultivating institutional isolation as has happened in recent years. Avellino has lost its leading role with respect to the province and has also lost it in the field of strategic planning. Today the city is a body foreign to the territories and in some way that desolate port is the sublimation of this condition. We must rethink the city, its function on a provincial and regional level, we must bring Avellino back to the center of planning policies, work with the entire institutional chain with the ambition of making up for lost time, of connecting the capital to high-speed rail»
It does not have an environmental policy.
“Real. But when we talk about environmental policies we talk about everything, we talk about mobility, urban planning, urban decorum, livability, we talk about Fenestrelle and Isochemistry. I don’t like making a shopping list, making a list of priorities. I find it easy and demagogic. The point is that we must start again from a vision, from clear strategic objectives, we must rethink Avellino. The hills surrounding the city are our sky line, we are the capital of green Irpinia but we are among the most polluted cities in the South as far as pm10 is concerned, we are prisoners of unsustainable traffic. There is not just one solution, there are many solutions that must be expressed in an organic design. I dream of a city with fewer cars, with more pedestrian areas, with interchange car parks and a finally sustainable public mobility system, I dream of a green city, with parks always open and cared for”
It has no real urban structure. It leaves the developers the freedom to continue building while the population decreases, so it is not known in whose favour.
«It would be unfair to point the finger at the builders category, but it would be hypocritical not to recognize that what you say is true. We believe that Avellino needs profound urban regeneration interventions, certainly not new concrete. Construction moves everything else and the cities that grow are the cities that change, that rethink themselves. The drift to which you refer finds its genesis in the inertia of these last twenty years, in the circumstance for which we stopped in an eternal present. It is undeniable, for example, that the public part of the current Puc has not been implemented at all. We need a shake-up, we need to work on a new plan, tailored to the city for what it is. We will do it”
We have a tunnel that cost eleven million euros and has been finished for at least two years but cannot be inaugurated because there is a problem with obtaining authorizations.
«The tunnel is the metaphor of this city. A work that could perhaps have made sense when it was conceived, but then, with the changes that occurred, it became completely useless. It will be a priority for us to understand the reasons for this setback, unfortunately we cannot go back. But the fact that the announced inauguration was presented as a historic event, as the sign of a relaunch for the community, says a lot about how we are combined. The light is very far away
The famous light rail, after fifteen years of incubation, turned out to be a disaster.
«A massacre. Avellino cannot imagine its future with an obsolete, uneconomic and polluting mobility system. Also on this point we propose a radical change, small shuttles capable of covering the entire city area, hybrid or electric, with times in line with those found in civil cities”
Don’t you find it scandalous that a complex like the former Moscati in Viale Italia is left empty, without a shred of idea for its reuse?
«Absolutely yes, that structure in the heart of the city tells us a lot about the ability of the ruling classes that have followed one another in the Municipality of Avellino in terms of planning and vision. It must be returned to the capital, with functions that can generate new flows, that can restore centrality to that part of Avellino and the path indicated by the Local Health Authority goes in this direction but must be explored further”
To this disaster, who should give answers and indicate solutions? Maybe it is this limbo without a future or possibility that forces our young people to flee.
«It’s up to politics. Because civility is nothing more than the torn garment of transformism, as Ciriaco De Mita warned. Because we need collective paths, inclusion, skills and the complexity of democracy, which is nourished by conflict and clash, but between ideas and not between people, between visions and not between particular interests. Avellino’s drift was born in the void of politics. Politics is called to fill that void.”
