Add the Gazzetta del Sud as a source
The accountant Antonino Messina, historic exponent of the Christian Democrats and mayor of Capo d’Orlando for a total of fifteen years, in various periods between 1972 and 1992, has died. This was announced in a press release by the Sicilian regional secretariat of the Italian Democratic Socialist Party which expresses deep condolences for his passing.
«With Nino Messina – declares the regional secretary of the PSDI, Antonio Matasso – a personality who has been a protagonist through a long season of the administrative, political and economic life of Capo d’Orlando, as well as of the entire province of Messina, disappears. An illustrious exponent of the tradition of Christian Democracy, Nino Messina was able to interpret, from his first steps in politics, a culture of confrontation between democratic and reformist forces, playing a central role in the affirmation of the centre-left formula in the Orlando context of over half a century ago, thanks to which a series of councils based on collaboration between the DC, PSI, PSDI and PRI followed, characterized by excellent results in the administration”.
Matasso recalls how that season favored, despite the distinction of their respective political identities, a long relationship of collaboration between Catholic democrats, socialists and social democrats, republicans. Even in 1991, during the last mayorship of the accountant Messina, the municipal administration was led by a coalition centered on the Christian Democrat group and the secular-socialist groups, when the Municipality sided with the Acio, the merchants’ association committed against racketeering, also through the institution of the body as a civil party in the trial of the extortionists. In 2014 the socialist anti-mafia foundation “Carmelo Battaglia” awarded him, together with his friend and former social democratic mayor Carmelo Giuseppe Antillo, the anti-mafia prize “Salvatore Carnevale”, recognizing the role played by the two administrators in supporting the mobilization of Orlandine traders against extortion.
«After the conclusion of the First Republic – continues Matasso – Nino Messina continued to look with interest at the construction of a political area of the reform center open to collaboration with the socialist, republican and liberal world. In 1996 he was among the promoters of the Ulivo in Capo d’Orlando, of which he was briefly coordinator, although he subsequently developed a critical position regarding the involvement of members of the radical left in the coalition. In the same years, Sergio Mattarella, then an authoritative exponent of the Italian People’s Party and now President of the Republic, contacted him proposing a candidacy for Parliament for the Crusader Shield of the PPI, a proposal which Nino Messina, while expressing gratitude, kindly preferred to decline”.
To his long political-administrative experience was added that at the helm of the Messina Chamber of Commerce, of which Antonino Messina was president and through which he was called to represent the economic and productive fabric of the province. The lifelong relationship of the former mayor of Orlandino with local traders and entrepreneurs was also particularly significant, even before and after the season of the anti-racket revolt in Capo d’Orlando. «That battle – underlines Matasso – saw institutions and civil society find the courage to react. Nino Messina and Carmelo Giuseppe Antillo, together with the other late Christian Democrat mayor Toto Longo, belong to a noble history of administrators who knew how to stand alongside economic operators extorted in one of the most difficult and most important passages of the recent experience of the entire Tyrrhenian-Nebroidea area. The fight against racketeering then became a characteristic asset for the Orlando ruling classes.”
«The closeness and condolences of the Sicilian social democrats reach the relatives of Nino Messina – concludes the representative of Il Sole nascente. The memory remains of a long experience at the service of the institutions and of a period in which the comparison between different political cultures, but belonging to the common democratic arc, represented an essential component of the public life of Capo d’Orlando, as well as of the whole country”.