The palpable distrust of our fellow citizens called to vote on 8 and 9 June to give a face to the new Mayor and the new City Council is no mystery.
Recurring statements such as: “everyone is the same anyway”, “what’s the point of voting, nothing will ever change”, “whoever goes there is just doing their own business”, are seriously worrying.
If this is the case and there is no doubt that these sentences represent the prevailing thoughts of the citizens of Manfredonia, then I think that a reflection out loud should be proposed now, before the vote.
An in-depth study that can be useful to the electorates and the voters and to the citizens in general, not so much to guide them in the choice of the Mayor and the City Council, which is the subject of free conviction, but, at the very least, to understand that the vote must be expressed in any case and that this guarantee constitutional, to which so many have sacrificed their lives, is extremely precious and absolutely cannot be wasted by deserting the polls.
We cannot leave it to others to decide for us.
If I don’t vote I have no voice and if I don’t vote whoever votes will have a double voice.
I do not believe, however, that this is the true intent of those who, overcome by discouragement, express total disinterest and distrust towards this great exercise of democracy.
The first consideration to be made which is clear to everyone in Manfredonia is that the driving force behind these elections has been left to civicism, to the civic lists and that the political parties have essentially joined forces with the proactive driving force of the civic lists;
The second consideration arises from the concern that the lack of initiative of the political parties in the composition of the lists and breakfasts could transform, after the run-off round (which will undoubtedly take place anyway) into a revenge aimed at influencing and caging the newly elected mayor;
The third consideration lies in the fact that municipal elections are normally played by relying on relatives, friendships, membership of various forms of aggregations and associations (hopefully legitimate), which hardly put the proposed programmatic content in the foreground.
What is missing in these situations is the real possibility of evaluating the potential of the various candidates for the office of Mayor and that of City Councilorto make the choice of who should be capable of embodying the electoral programme.
A recurring complaint seems to be that of defining the current elected official as not up to the task, given the repeated failures the city has faced in recent years.
Failures that can not only be attributed only to the First Citizens but also to the Municipal Councils, moreover, given that for many the electoral slogan is that of wanting to show their face, this should also mean that the face must absorb the negativity that has arisen responsible, directly and indirectly.
I sincerely hope that the role of the City Council, a fundamental body of administration and democracy, does not express itself, as in the last mandate, only in disqualifying the current mayor for having appointed one councilor rather than another.
Basically, having acted without a real verification of the political-administrative action actually carried out always has the flavor of an ambush without real political motivations.
What is serious is that the political motivations, subsequently used to justify an inconsistent action of the majority of the councilors who signed the dissolution, worked to justify the true, very personal reasons underlying the dissolution of the Council and the dismissal of the First Citizen.
Effectively, if these logics continue to persist and prevail, any administration will be at risk of dissolution and any mayor will be “sub iudice”with respect to the maneuvers of positioning power in the administrative machine.
Up to this point, as we can see, and there is no fear of denials about the fact that very frequently things actually go like this, not a minimum of consideration is exercised for the problems of the city and the people, tragically evading the trust of the voters.
Whoever reads, regardless of how they want to consider this analysis, knows well that things are exactly like this.
And then, rightly, we must ask ourselves where the good lies in this electoral campaign.
Whoever will be the recipient of the electoral trust and will sit in Palazzo San Domenico, to represent us, must know how to take very seriously into consideration the expression of the vote addressed to him, and must also be aware of carrying out the role that falls to him in the substantial diversity that is in the hands of the First Citizen rather than the Municipal Councillors.
The First Citizen is fully entitled to the autonomy that the law assigns to him in appointing a council that operates consistently with what he has included in the programapproved by the coalition that supports it, presented to the competent bodies, the City Council has the role of control and proposal, of support to the mayor for the part that responds to the name of the majority and of stimulus and criticism for the minority or opposition.
The conditioning of the First Citizen, in the choices that the law attributes to him, must be contained within the roles that the law assigns to the Mayor and City Council, absolutely avoiding undue forms of pressure for what is strictly reserved for the First Citizen.
Some may think that these considerations are too unbalanced in favor of the power that a Mayor assumes, in reality these are only the provisions and attributions of the law, a democratically approved law which should also be revised over time, given the numerous cases of early dissolution of municipal councils in Italy.
Moreover, in a few days we will witness the start of the jousts that precede the ballot and then, with the Mayor elected, those jousts that precede the formation of the government and sub-government of the city.
If we want this city to experience a new spring, this is the good that this electoral round can promise, that is, that everyone sticks to their roles, without prevaricating or pushing beyond the boundaries of competence.
If we know how to do this, we will have a solid and profitable administration and we will only be able to do this if we have learned from the mistakes of the past, both near and remote, or with an eye also on the historical memory of the city, which many ignore.
The mayor who will have the honor of representing and governing Manfredonia takes responsibility for ensuring that the vote granted to him and the City Council enhances the city and ensures that the city values and respects the citizen because this is the ultimate goal of the administrations locals.
Legality, the absolute mantra for Manfredonia, begins with the respect that citizens must have for the institutions and the respect that the institutions owe to the citizenwithout this even the most incisive action of the Judiciary and the police will have the bitter meaning of the acknowledgment of a failure that has already occurred.
The First Citizen that we will elect has the task of being everyone’s Mayor and of knowing how to combine, wisely, the opposing needs that the electorate and the city will highlight.
Manfredonia, 06.07.2024
Ciro Del Nobile
DEMOS Coordinator Manfredonia
