Klaus Davi will try again. See you next time municipal elections Of Reggio Calabria will still be from the match: the news had been in the air for some time, but today the confirmation comes from his own speakerphone to the microphones of StrettoWeb in which the well-known mass media expert expressed himself with the usual brilliance that has always characterized him. In the autumn 2020 municipal elections he narrowly missed out, around 50 votes among other things.”disappeared in one night“, as he himself denounced after the elections.
As a candidate for Mayor he managed to achieve well 4,417 votesequal to 4.7% of preferences: in any list he would have been the most voted overall. His list of support, however, stopped at 2,772 votes equal to 3.02%. According to a complex electoral mechanism, he would have needed about 55 more votes to enter the city council.
“But no one wanted me, Peppe. Neither the state nor the mafia wanted me. And don’t make me say anything else. I would have upset everything in Palazzo San Giorgio, politics and the apparatus. This is why I was a nuisance, both for the ‘Ndrangheta and for the State. A DDA magistrate told me something that I never forget, and if he reads it he will remember it too. He told me verbatim: ‘remember that in Reggio nothing is as it seems’. If you apply this maxim to my non-election…”.
But it was still an extraordinary result: in Reggio Calabria, a homosexual Swiss who is an anti-Ndrangheta journalist and who alone came close to getting 5,000 votes in the elections could not even be imagined.
“Not only that, but regardless of the result, for me that electoral campaign on the street, with the people and among the people was a fantastic adventure. This is why I would like to do it again. I really feel the desire to try again: I consider Reggio my adopted city, and if I didn’t run again I would be betraying this city. If I did so well the first time, this time I feel I can do better. A lot more people know me in the city, I live on the street, I go shopping, I meet everyone, I’m not someone who pushes around…”.
This time, however, there will be many more civic candidates than then: many are moving early.
“Well, Angela Marcianò was there then too. However, I want to try, despite all these civic candidacies which I consider positive signs in any case, first of all the entry into the field of Lamberti who is without a shadow of a doubt the strongest and most consistent. Ninni Tramontana, on the other hand, is a character who seems more local to me and who I believe in the end can only merge with Lamberti. Reggio needs to get out of its self-referentiality, Lamberti is a national-level figure, has a network of important contacts and can drive the city. Reggio needs people who are known even beyond the Pollino”.
So why instead of running for Mayor, don’t you embrace Lamberti’s project and both become stronger together?
“Let’s see, I don’t rule it out, whether there will be mutual will perhaps among all the civic candidates and not just two. There is still quite a bit of time, the dialogue is open with everyone, I respect and appreciate Lamberti but today I would like to do something individually, a second individual attempt, then we’ll see, let’s see what can be done, the negotiations will come later, Now it’s still early and we can only make long-term hypotheses.”.
Dispersing the civic vote into a thousand streams could be counterproductive for everyone.
“There is no doubt, we need to unite all healthy forces also because coalitions will always be the favourites. The centre-right will be even more the super favorite for the next municipal elections in Reggio, then there will be Elly Schlein’s PD which will no longer be the PD it was before and which will support a unified candidate with the 5 Star Movement. In Reggio I got twice as many grillini on my own, imagine if they go alone again. Among other things, from Conte’s speeches I see that they want an agreement with the Democratic Party to have more weight, and I think they will do so. Certainly the left will be disadvantaged by the destructive experience of Falcomatà, after this catastrophic management I don’t think they will still be competitive”.
What kind of ideas and proposals would you like to bring for Reggio?
“I’m already thinking about it and I have a particularly important idea: in my list I would like to give an international flavor, I would like to involve some important Israeli startupper, some technological genius who decides to give me a hand to help the kids of Reggio, you know well that Israel is at the global forefront of technology. And then Reggio has a special bond with the Jewish world and should enhance it: Israel was founded by Ashkenaz, there is a great tradition linked to Reggio. Despite the winds of war, the future of the South is in the Mediterranean: always on the margins of the Italian State and certainly not the fault of Giorgia Meloni, the South must rediscover the role of player in the Mediterranean that it had in the past, just think that in In the 16th century, Calabria was the world’s leading exporter of silk, it internationalized its local products and traded with Spain and North Africa. Here, I am thinking of a list of international scope, obviously also with local professionals but which can project the city beyond the Strait”.
Speaking of the Strait: the Bridge is already animating the debate in these European elections, and will certainly do so even more in the municipal elections.
“I’m very much in favor of it, it’s a great opportunity to give a positive signal to the whole world, I feel bad thinking that important people from Reggio have gone on television to say that the Bridge can’t be built because the mafia is there… But how bad can you want it? to your country to say something like that on television? So they stab Reggio, all of Calabria and the entire South. We must win the challenge of the Bridge, because it would change the paradigm of the backward and poor South: it would provide economic development, jobs, growth, tourism. Does Salvini do it? So who cares… It’s not a personal matter, it would be a turning point in vitality for the whole of Southern Italy. But is there really anyone in Leonardo’s country who thinks that a bridge cannot be built from a technological point of view? I really will never be able to understand No Ponte…”.
You talked about tourism: a new season has begun in the city with Ryanair flights.
“Occhiuto performed an extraordinary operation, a great result. He shook up and proved his predecessors wrong, especially the local administrators, who had told us for years that Ryanair could not land here just to justify their political failures. Now do we seize the opportunity given to us by Occhiuto, or is there someone moaning there too? Stop feeling sorry for yourself! A positive season can open for Reggio with Ryanair, the Bridge… Obviously the centre-right will be further advantaged by these successes, with the push of the national and regional government, the cards of the Bridge and Ryanair which are concrete facts that bring benefits and will gather consensus , this is why the coalition will arrive as super favorites in the elections and will be difficult to beat”.
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