LECCE – In the next few days, according to weather forecasts, the anticyclone Minos will arrive to set the temperature on fire, but politics anticipates a boiling climate. The center-right has already received the favor of Agostino Ciucci, while Alberto Siculella will announce his choice today. The confrontation between the two mayoral candidates, Adriana Poli Bortone for the centre-right and Carlo Salvemini for the centre-left, is no holds barred. If Poli Bortone alludes to alleged favoritism towards friends and surroundings, Salvemini recalls the speech of the former mayor Paolo Perrone upon taking office in the Municipality of Lecce, when he attributed the serious financial situation of the institution to the legacy left by the senator su Buoni municipal offices, buildings in via Brenta, Lupia and services.
In short, the “moral question” becomes central in the final rush leading to the run-off on Sunday and Monday.
Poli Bortone accuses: «Mayor Salvemini continues to give numbers, making the millions of euros of the Institutional Development Contract available for Lecce rise day by day. I inform him – even if he already knows, but he pretends not to know – that the Government, confirmed by Minister Raffaele Fitto, is reviewing the CIS regarding interventions in the navies. It must be redone in agreement with the citizens, not as wanted by friends of friends.”
Salvemini, during the rally in Piazza Ludovico Ariosto the other evening, abandoned his low tone: «For over a month reference has been made to dossiers of resolutions, determinations of provisions which allude to a compromise of the public interest in order to favor specific facts and situations. For months it has been claimed that there are professionals responsible for demonstrating how the economic-financial situation of the institution is different from the one we have reconstructed. I haven’t seen anything for months. A person who was very dear to me was pulled by the hair: Stefano Salvemini. I declare myself ready, as of now, to accompany Adriana Poli Bortone to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to deliver the dossier that she believes she has prepared to denounce the wrongdoings committed during my five-year period in government of the city.”
In support of Salvemini, the president of the regional council, Loredana Capone, comments: «I have said it and I repeat it: I would leave the keys to my house to Carlo Salvemini. And today our home is our city. The keys to be handed over to our Lecce are those. Let’s not leave them to that power group that left us a mountain of debt starting from the BOC and the trolleybus and which now wants to return to Palazzo Carafa and take us back thirty years.”
Seasoned with vitriol, the electoral campaign proceeds at forced stages for the mayoral candidates who are beating the city and the marinas inch by inch.
Throughout the week Salvemini will meet citizens in the neighborhoods. Yesterday afternoon he spoke in Piazza San Michele Arcangelo (Case Magno). Today at 7pm it will be in Piazzale Bologna in the Stadio district, tomorrow at 6pm at Villa Convento and at 7pm at the Salesiani. On Friday he will close his campaign for the run-off with a rally in Piazza Sant’Oronzo.
Poli Bortone has announced a meeting with the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara in Piazzetta Alleanza (near Piazza Mazzini) for tomorrow, at 6.30 pm. Meanwhile, all the coordinators of the 10 lists that make up the centre-right coalition were outraged by a reference to the program «Dillo a Telerama» made by Salvemini during the rally the other evening: «It was pathetic to listen to the gentleman in question blaming the administrator of Lupiae Servizi (Alfredo Pagliaro, ed) due to the city’s neglect, accusing him of having campaigned with his son in cahoots with TeleRama which, through the column «Tell Telerama», would have subjected him to a continuous drip of accusations. Yet Lupiae Servizi, for the outgoing man, until a few weeks ago was the flagship of his administration, as per the official press release at the end of last May, but he has a short memory and prefers lies to the truth.”
And to defend Poli Bortone, from Salvemini’s reconstruction of judicial events that concerned Via Brenta, the lawyer Francesca Conte takes to the field and warns that the process «concluded with sentence no. 733 of 12.03.2018, issued by the Court criminal court of Lecce in collegial composition, “Acquittal because the fact does not exist” for the crime of embezzlement and statute of limitations for the crime of “abuse of office”, a crime, moreover, now decriminalized” and that if the matter is brought up again they will be triggered the complaints.
