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Aversa (Caserta) – “His dream has come true and Matacena transforms the council chamber into a dance hall. The civic coalition led by the new mayor has inaugurated a new standard for the celebration of electoral victories. After the ballot, taken by the euphoria of victory, the newly elected representatives probably got carried away and decided not only to storm the council chamber, but also to transform it into the new exclusive location for a memorable political party. Could he make that ‘deaf and grey’ Chamber a bivouac of gangs? Maybe not, but he did”. These are the words of the minority centre-left municipal councilor Mauro Baldascino after the victory in the run-off of the new mayor Franco Matacena.
“Without any authorization, as far as we know – he continues – the coalition has demonstrated a remarkable spirit of initiative and creativity. The council chamber, which usually hosts discussions and decisions of great importance to the community, was magically transformed into an improvised ballroom, complete with loud chants and songs, punctuated by banging on the seats. What a show of originality!”. Baldascino adds: “Forgetting for a moment that the main place of the Aversa institutions is not exactly suitable for such noisy and tacky parties, the coalition took the opportunity to redefine the concept of ‘civic participation’. We cannot help but admire the audacity of this move: who would have thought of uniting politics and worldliness in such an ingenious way?”.
Then the invitation: “Aside from irony, we invite our illustrious winners to reflect that, although the fervor of victory is understandable, perhaps it would have been more appropriate to let the council chamber not suffer this massacre. The respect and integrity of institutions must always be preserved and protected. Maybe it would have been better to opt for a less institutional location and more suited to dancing and singing, such as a square or a party hall.”
Baldascino wrote to the prefectural commissioner. “We congratulate you on the victory, but we suggest reserving the celebrations in more suitable spaces. Perhaps we will leave these activities, noisy and in bad taste, to a future when the election of the ‘Mayor of the Land of Toys’ is established. Pending this happening, we have asked the Prefectural Commissioner to clarify what happened and find out what initiatives he intends to take to censor and stigmatize the matter, also to prevent similar episodes from repeating in the future, because we believe that this behavior represents not only a violation of security regulations, but also a lack of respect for the importance and sacredness of democratic institutions”.
Finally an analysis of the vote. “The excesses of the celebrations cannot however hide the fact that Matacena comes out of the ballot very politically weak. To our memory, there has never been a mayor elected with such a low number of votes (8466). From a first analysis, what was missing was his electorate, who apparently did not go to vote and this highlights a problem of recognizability of his leadership. While Farinaro, in fact, kept his first round votes, Matacena lost around 5000 (5135 to be exact, compared to his coalition’s first round). When there are no lists to gather support, which for him had already been lower than his coalition, Matacena’s votes drop heavily. This evidence of numbers, combined with the heterogeneity of the fake civic coalition, raises serious doubts about Matacena’s governability of Aversa. I hope this isn’t the case for the city.”
