“I thought about it.” Flavio Stasi uses a post on social media to confess that in recent days he has considered the idea of leaving his political commitment. The mayor of Corigliano Rossano talks about the temptation to return to the profession of engineer or to undertake that of a teacher, which he defines as a “little dream in the drawer”. What holds him back, he writes, is the trust of his community. “If I said that in recent days the idea of giving up, of going back to my own things, of going back to being an engineer or perhaps starting to be a school teacher has never occurred to me, I would be telling a lie and I’m not used to lying”, begins the mayor.
The call to commitment against the ‘Ndrangheta
Stasi retraces his path, from activism in high school to city administration. He remembers the nightly writings against the coffee monopoly of the ‘Ndrangheta, the solidarity initiatives with the judiciary and the administrative acts with which, he claims, he faced the local gangs. It is in this passage that the bitterness emerges for the support he would have expected to receive: “You expect and are ready to accept anything that comes from the other side of the fence, but you expect nothing, except defense and support, from your side.”
«It is my people who nail me to my duty»
The mayor then recalls some stages of his history: the beating suffered in 2011, the candidacy in 2016, the election in 2019 as the first mayor of the unified city and the reconfirmation in 2024. Moments in which, he underlines, the relationship with the community was crucial to moving forward. «Once again it is my people who pin me down to my duty», writes Stasi. He admits that it will not be easy to push away thoughts of giving up, but ties the continuation of his commitment to the responsibility of the trust received from Corigliano Rossano and from a part of Calabria. In the end, the mayor postpones the replies to the “few false notes” and announces the return to administrative activity: “Today we go back to work: we have done a lot but we still have to do a lot, always and only on the same side”.