A walkable and safe city. It is the idea of Potenza that Pierluigi Smaldone, lawyer and outgoing city councilor, has in the running for the office of mayor with the support of three lists, two civic and one of the M5S.
Lawyer Smaldone You have been campaigning as a mayoral candidate for months, highlighting the terrible conditions of the city.
“I returned to Potenza in 2017, after 10 years away, and I found an abandoned city in the throes of a civil, social and economic depression that I couldn’t tolerate. I imagined and built, on a passion I had had for some time, a political commitment so as not to lose the right to criticize and therefore to try to make my contribution. Then, in fact, in October, from a very well-attended meeting, this project and this idea of candidacy emerged and has been taking shape. Today in the coalition we have three lists in support and we note that we did not start early but we did the right and necessary work to give a perspective to a city that is very difficult to manage”.
You don’t live downtown but you’re very focused on this area of the city. Why?
“I don’t live in the center at the moment for family reasons but, in fact, I live in the centre, my house is in the center and I frequent it regularly because I believe it is the part that has suffered the most from bad administration in recent years. The most abandoned part, which has lost an identity that must be rebuilt by involving the city.”
What are the three priority points of your program, to be achieved in the first hundred days?
“We had a very clear approach to the program, built in a participatory manner, and we had at heart the idea of keeping very concrete points within it, close to the needs of citizens, without proposing futuristic solutions. And at the first point there are the roads. There is a truly dangerous, complicated situation, an abandoned road and we have structured a solution that will allow the main road to draw on supra-municipal funding to try to solve this problem.”
You are a man of the centre-left. The coalition, however, arrived divided at the elections with 3 members running. Couldn’t we really find the synthesis?
“The center-left is always and only concerned with the idea of maintaining the balance between the currents and, therefore, keeping the various leaders and references between currents together and not with the idea of winning. So, winning is something that doesn’t matter. We, however, want to carry out a government operation and not a testimony operation to give this city a future”
Why should the people of Potenza vote for it?
“They should vote for us, and I speak in the plural because we are a team, because we are the only credible and free alternative and the only proposal capable of giving a future to this city, in the name of change and rigor. We will be free from snares and snares even in the formation of the council and we will be the only ones who can ensure serious and free work to try to move something in this abandoned city”.
