OfCarlo Macrì
In the Calabrian municipality, as in seven other areas, no candidatures were presented for the election of the mayor
From our correspondent
You don’t get to San Luca by chance. In Corrado Alvaro’s country, the disaffection at the polls is also a coincidence. For the fourth time in the last 20 years here, on the slopes of Aspromonte, there is no vote for the municipal elections. Lack of lists as in seven other Italian municipalities: Melissa (Kr), San Lorenzo (Rc), Saliceto (Cuneo), San Daniele Po (Cremona), Casasse (Turin) and San Prospero (Modena).
In the town that many consider the stronghold of the ‘Ndrangheta, the outgoing mayor, Bruno Bartolo, who has governed the town for the last five years, immediately puts his hand forward. “I have not suffered any kind of conditioning during my mandate.” The decision taken by Bartolo not to run again is only political. «In these difficult years of government, the institutions have left me alone. Never a phone call from anyone, at least to understand if San Luca had any needs. To get a school director to these latitudes – explains the former mayor – I had to threaten to resign”.
You don’t see an electoral poster for the European elections around the country. «No candidate came to San Luca for a rally, or a meeting with the people» joked Bartolo. Which, however, leaves the door open to his hypothetical political commitment to his country. «I leave the leadership of the Municipality with the awareness of having given my all. In return I only received punches in the stomach. And also a notice of guarantee for the spillage of waste water into the river that borders the city stadium. Irregularities committed by the prefectural commission in 2017″. Despite the lack of interest in the elections, in 2013 San Luca also engineered a dissolution due to mafia infiltration. «My greatest regret – says Bartolo – is that in these five years I have not managed to loosen the layer of prejudice that suffocates this country».
The former mayor is disappointed with the institutions. «The Minister of Defense Crosetto came to San Luca to pay homage to a killed carabiniere and did not want to meet me. I wasn’t allowed to approach him, not even to say hello. The people of San Luca notice these things and feel humiliated by these attitudes of national politicians.” The sense of belonging to the institutions, however, still accompanies Bruno Bartolo’s path. In a letter addressed to the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the Minister of the Interior Piantedosi and the President of the Region Roberto Occhiuto, he launches an idea that is also intended as a provocation, recalling that in the elections of two years ago in San Luca only the 22nd voted % of those entitled. «Establish a course aimed at encouraging political commitment which should especially interest young people. To form a new civil and democratic awareness that instills in the depths of consciences the value of legality and the active exercise of democracy and respect for the rules of associative life”.
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June 8, 2024
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