There is a symbolic image that represents the seats of the city of Naples in the two days of voting for the European elections: it is that of a scrutineer of the Viviani schoolto Posillipowho, to overcome the boredom of the long hours of waiting without voters, takes a pack of Neapolitan cards and starts playing solitaire on a stall in the school that hosts the polling station.
After a first day of waiting and yawning, yesterday the script was repeated, in every polling station in the city: presidents and scrutineers waiting for very rare voters and endless hours that pass with exasperating slowness: «There is only one consolation – there said a very young health scrutineer yesterday afternoon – the counting operations will be very quick and we will go to sleep early. At least this…”.
We traveled around the city trying to describe each area, from Posillipo to Iron Tavernfrom the Vast at the Healthcarefrom I was shocked to Escape. We observed the same scenes of desolation at each of the polling stations we stopped at. We also heard the common protest from the scrutineers: «Pay too low. 110 euros and 40 cents for thirty hours of work, excluding counting. It means 3.68 euros per hour: a pittance.”
The issue was also raised, officially, by the professor Bianca D’Angelopresident of the section of Angiulli school to Healthcare. The teacher wrote to the prefect Michele Di Bari and to the Head of the Internal Affairs Department of the Ministry of the Interior, Claudio Palomba. In the letter, sent on behalf of sections 121, 123 and 125 of Naples, the working hours are recalled “in exchange for a lump sum compensation just sufficient to cover lunch and transport costs”; then the lash: «Therefore, the conditions are highlighted that are inhumane and pay little attention to creating situations suitable for the management of voting operations. What is the recognition for having granted one’s availability and for fulfilling a public service employed by the State?”.
The answer to this question was not expected by a twenty-four year old scrutineer from the municipality of Qualiano who, after the first day, did not return to the polling station yesterday: first she provided some justification, then she admitted that she did not want to return because the pay as a scrutineer was too low. The woman was reported by the police for “abandoning the polling station without legitimate reason”.
«Do you know how many people under the age of thirty have come since this morning? Only two», Taverna del Ferro Vittorino da Feltre school5pm, deserted seat where, however, joyful chaos reigns because the sections are almost entirely entrusted to willing kids. It is they who underline the absence of their peers from this electoral round: «They are not coming, someone has convinced them, en masse, that their vote is useless – the secretary of the section is heartfelt – they should understand that the sign they put on the card, whatever symbol they cross, serves to determine their own future. Also because, if they don’t come to vote, there will still be someone who will decide for them too. Abstention is not a vote.”
Scene change. Healthcare, Angiulli school. Here the solitude of the seats is even more tenacious because the sections are on the first floor of the school, there is not even contact with the street, with the entrance door: «The children of this neighborhood are disappointed – says a representative of list that, solitary and tireless, continues to guard the desert – the world of politics must be able to interpret this signal: abstentionism, here, represents a vote of protest, of anger, of disillusionment”.
Just at the moment in which the man explains the abstentionism of young people, a 22-year-old arrives accompanied by her father who has already voted but did not hesitate to go down to the counter to accompany his girlfriend to the polls: «Me and my group of friends – says the girl under her father’s loving gaze – we don’t think the vote is useless. We all went to deposit the ballot in the ballot box. It’s an opportunity to make your voice heard.” The girl’s very sweet gaze is lost in that of her father who nods satisfied with her: a breath of fresh air on the day of the triumph of abstentionism.
