The diocesan section of Catanzaro-Squillace of the Meic (ecclesial movement of cultural commitment), chaired by Luigi Bulotta, addressed an open letter to the candidates for the next elections of the President and the Regional Council of Calabria.
What is the Meic
Meic is an association of secular Christians, engaged in the world of culture, of professions, which propose to contribute, in their own way, in Italy and in the peculiarity of local churches, to cooperate in the evangelical spirit to the maturation of civil consciousness, creating an ecclesial experience oriented, among other things, to the cultural commitment of research and critical discernment, as well as attention to the socially more relevant instances, Collaborate with a mediation consistent between faith and history, to operate in solidarity and co -responsibility with the whole community for the realization of a pastoral care attentive to the signs of the times and animated by an ecumenical spirit.
The text of the letter
Dear candidates and candidates,
We are now near the performance of the regional elections, which see all of you, in a heated competition. At this moment we want to send you an appeal that can remind you of the needs of the people you think you can represent, in the event of victory in the electoral competition.
We want to remember, first of all, that politics, in the most authentic sense of the term, is service to the community. As we know, the political term derives from the Greek word Pòlis, which means organically constituted cities and not sum of particular interests. Pòlis is the place suitable for the size of existence. The Greeks saw the essence of life “political” living. Politics, therefore, was born from man and turns to man to achieve the common good, the quality of life of every human being, a good that, being common, is not some, but universal.
“The common good – said John Paul II – to be truly common, must be in direct relationship with the whole society” the good of everyone and that of each are determined without each other without absorbing.
We fully share and appreciate the invitation that if Msgr. Claudio Maniago, our archbishop and vice -president of the CEC, has addressed candidates, that is, “to produce programs that are attentive, not to particular interests, but to the only great interest that is the common good of this region, the good of all, in particular of those bands that struggle more to live, to live their lives and live it here”.
To achieve its end, politics uses political power, but power must be only a means of achieving the common good and what the good consists: order, justice, affirmation and enjoyment of rights, the maintenance of peace, of social concord.
If the person-social relationship is upset, the concept of common good loses its value and politics is reduced to the search and conservation of power. In this way, act
Politically it only means aspiring to power, fighting for power, living to conquer power, distorting, as the true sense of politics often happens today. Political power cannot be for the benefit of people
who exercise it, but for the benefit of the community and of all the members who make it up. The real policy is, in fact, called by its nature to create a right society, to eliminate the conditions that create conditions of inequalities and injustices.
Certainly politics as an exercise of power is subject to the temptation and risk of abuse, corruption and the profit. But temptation and risk do not remove dignity and value, much less allow disengage and escapes.
Politics must return to being a service for the community, this is at national level, but must be worth even more for our South if we want to get out of the isolation and social and economic marginalization.
We, Calabrian citizens all, want to achieve the hope of having a regional government seriously in love with the real common good, capable of taking care responsibly and effectively of Calabria.
We need to hear what your programs are, your projects, for the development of our Calabria and satisfy the many needs; But we want concrete and achievable programs and projects, not dream books; We do not want to hear slogans, messages to effects, criticisms and slanders against opponents, but new ideas, ideas translatable into actions, in concrete works and facts.
It is therefore requested that the new government primarily established a climate of compliance with the rules giving first, in carrying out its executive function, the example of adhesion to what they establish.
Only if this adhesion will be visible in the institutions that are most representative of the Region, can the conditions be placed so that the Calabrians and Calabria have the hope of a future made of honest work, paid in a regular basis, able to exploit the resources that the Region has been naturally equipped, precisely those of which our Leonida Repaci writes, without being able to be disfigured in the unlimited management of some work chairs.
Only if this adhesion is visible the Calabrians can they hope to stay in Calabria and not to emigrate to survive. The dismantling of certain other working chains, dismantled in our land to be reassembled elsewhere, almost always in the north, condemns us to have to follow the work, leaving only the memories and the elderly here.
Only if this adhesion will be visible can you have the reasonable certainty of building new roads, renewing the current railway network with high speed and bringing Calabria out of isolation, especially in the Ionian coast that pours into conditions of abandonment and exclusion from national life. And we wondered several times if this isolation has been the involuntary result of multiple contributing factors, even if not predetermined, or the perverse fruit of a plane designed to the table.
Only if this adhesion is visible can Calabria truly tempting because entrepreneurs from other places in Italy or the world decide, sure they are not crushed by the lace and the underworld, to come to invest in our region.
We ask you to remember, in the event of affirmation in the next electoral competition, especially the health needs of us Calabrian citizens, mortified in the possibility of having guaranteed the right to be treated in our own land and without the need to face the so -called “travel of hope” (in the event that there is still time to make them …).
There is no lack of intelligences necessary to ensure the effectiveness of this right. It is known to all that in many Italian hospitals, Calabrian doctors excel, who are unable to emerge sufficiently in Calabria for organizational difficulties and as a result of an old and new clientelism that have led to the accommodation in the public places of the health sector of mediocre staff, from which those who have guaranteed the recruitment would never be cured knowing that they can count on financial availability suitable for guaranteeing medical assistance in places where the clientelism.
This is requested even if the electoral result saw you non -winners but in the minority and opposition. We ask you to overcome “the logic of the fight” which animates many local, regional administrations (and much more), in which it happens that, instead of being oriented to the pursuit of the common good, we continue in an atmosphere of perennial air campaign air the exercise of the war at the expense of the solution of the problems that continue to remain unsolved and to infiacchious territories already poor.
You are still requested that in the exercise of your legislative and executive functions you do not make us want further interventions of the judiciary (which would demonstrate the inability of the Calabrians to self -government) but that you are referring to make the voice of those represented at the state institutions superordinate to the Region and also dementia the Calabrian problems.
The effectiveness of the representativeness that you think you can exercise (and that has determined you in the decision to apply) will not have to confirm a mere ghost that has agitated the only times of the election campaign.
It depends, as already mentioned, on the ability to remain adhering to the rules but, at the same time, to be able to see before the voters and other competitors the solution to the problems of the Calabrian community in terms of effectiveness, justice and beauty. Beauty not so much aesthetic, but the result of an always vital balance and the effect of a promise of vitality and energy.
We would like, in fact, that our land, already naturally beautiful, could begin to live in normal that the physiological life cycle provides and that it did not turn into a hospice.
This is the hope of some, but we would like much more.
We would like Calabria to remain alive with all the age groups that existence offers to live. Everyone, mainly to the youngest, should be guaranteed growth, development, freedom in the choice to stay or leave. Because you will have to deal with and not an obligation.
Only a forward -looking look and not bent on one’s interests, only an acute intelligence and able to tighten skilled and productive relationships of good with good forces, only a ability to reinvent itself the use of the resources that we already have, only this will be able to give us the best we would like.
And only if you know try to be equipped to do all this and not to play a executive role of things decided by others for the interests of clear or dark lobbies (or, even, in clandestinity and in illegality), we will be able to grant you our trust, with a vote that expresses our choice in complete freedom and responsibility.