«The Italian Constitution cannot be touched, the people do not want it to be tampered with. Instead, we must apply it entirely and reform the electoral system to return sovereignty to the citizens: it is time to return to the proportional system and preferences to once again give strength and a real right of choice to the people.” This is the message launched by the mayor of Cosenza Franz Caruso during the presentation of the book-interview “Conversation on the Constitution of the Italian Republic”, written by Professor Antonino Spadaro together with the journalist Francesco Kostner, published by Pellegrini.
The first citizen expressed a reflection on the state of Italian democracy, starting from the value of the Charter defined as “the Statute of our country, where our common roots lie, a heritage written with the blood of the Resistance and undoubtedly anti-fascist”.
«We must have the intellectual honesty – said Caruso – to admit our mistakes. If today we find ourselves suffering the deleterious effects of the differentiated autonomy project, we owe it to the wicked choice made by my own political party with the modification of Title V in 2001. A reform that paved the way for the fragmentation of rights and which risks dividing Italy into twenty small ‘republics’, with twenty different health, education, public transport and energy systems. A drift that dramatically penalizes the South and Calabria, going in the exact opposite direction to that of Europe, which with the 209 billion of the Pnrr intended to fill the territorial gaps, not accentuate them”.
Finally, Caruso launched the proposal to make the Constitution «a compulsory study text in school curricula, at least from middle school onwards. Only through the knowledge and memory of that extraordinary page of freedom can authentically democratic consciences be formed”