«I have decided to accept the proposal of a group of intellectuals, trade unionists, professionals, grassroots activists from the progressive Reggina area who asked the national leaders of the parties of the so-called broad field to nominate me for this demanding challenge». Journalist Carmine Fotia announced this in a note in view of the supplementary elections in the single-member constituency of the Chamber of Reggio Calabria scheduled for 27 and 28 September.
«Mine – he adds – is not a flight forward, nor an act indifferent to the parties. I and my supporters are not and will never be against the parties. With humility and by building good governance practices and culture from the bottom up, we want to help them regenerate. I have personally informed all the leaders of the local and national broad camp and await their decisions, while the center right already has its candidate, a Roman lawyer and treasurer of Forza Italia, and a candidacy from Futuro Nazionale is announced.” «For the camp that opposes the center-right – says Fotia – this is a decisive test, to reverse the sign of a long series of defeats from 2022 to 2026. This appeal leveraged the visceral love I have for the city where I was born and where I lived my adolescence. I have always returned to Reggio, not only for my solid family ties, but also to talk about its tragedies, the long and difficult fight against the ‘Ndrangheta which poisons the blood of this land. I know that Reggio is not irredeemable. This narrative only serves to keep her a slave to a destiny she did not choose.” «I am not applying to participate. I’m running to win – says Fotia -. The challenge is difficult, but ‘the secret of every success is to persevere, not asking yourself the impossible, but having faith in the impossible, as the anthropologist Umberto Zanotti Bianco, one of the pioneers of solidarity in the White Mountain, the Aspromonte of my childhood, said.’
«As far as I’m concerned – Fotia continues – I’m in no hurry. But Reggio can’t wait long. The vote is just a few weeks away. The progressive camp in Reggio Emilia, so rich in energy excluded from a policy that too often presents itself as a pure power game, needs a shake-up. A call to commitment. Not tomorrow, but here and now. This is why I have decided to commit myself directly to my city and to a left that ensures the rights of freedom, dignified work, social justice, safety for all citizens, integration and welcome for migrants who respect Italian laws, protection for the weak and fragile.” «Reggio – he concludes – is not a province into which to parachute a person who knows nothing about this land, its beauty, its dramas, its hopes. Reggio is not a land of conquest for the heirs of the fascists who put it on fire in 1970, exploiting a sacrosanct popular anger. There was blood, bombs, deaths, arrests. Reggio is the gentle revolution of my dear and late friend Italo Falcomatà, it is the courage of kindness, it is the center of the Mediterranean, it is the South that does not ask for assistance but far-sighted investments, it is the page that we can write together against a right that is increasingly inclined to authoritarian and liberticidal impulses”.