The pains of the center-left. Franz Caruso doesn’t take a step back. «We will appeal to the Regional Administrative Court against the calling of the consultative referendum on the merger. I contest the regional law and that is the method used to arrive at the constitution of the single city». The mayor of the capital articulates his position in view of the popular consultation that the president of the regional council, Roberto Occhiuto, is preparing to convene. «It is not possible to exonerate municipal councils from choices of this type. On the occasion of the mergers between Casali del Manco and Corigliano Rossano the municipal assemblies were called to express their opinion. And so I cannot bear that the approved law entrusts the regional council alone with the power to dissolve and merge municipalities at will. This is the point on which I call the administrative judges to intervene. For the rest, I am in favor of the single city and I even wrote it in my electoral program. A program with which I won the elections.”
13 municipal councilors of the majority who signed a document fully embracing the line chosen by the regional and provincial group of the democratic party do not think so.
Here is what they write: «If today the single city of Cosenza, Rende and Castrolibero is not a forced procedure of coercive dissolution in 4 months, a real blitz of the Calabria Region, we owe it to the Pd group in the regional council which with a constructive and intelligent spirit has postponed the procedure and armored the municipal routes until 2027 without questioning the single city itself, the true future of the urban area.
In the next two years we will all have to work together to be prepared for the merger, harmonizing the urban planning programs, rationalizing the organic plans, sharing services and preparing a statute capable of enhancing the specificities of the different territories. We all think that the unique city is an unmissable opportunity for political, economic, commercial and social growth of our urban area which will thus be able to reaffirm its leading role in the entire region”. The signatories of the text, which highlights a vertical fracture in the center-left – as it had been within the Bruzi Dems – are: Francesco Graziadio, Gianfranco Tinto, Aldo Trecroci, Bianca Rende, Raffaele Fuorivia, Andrea Golluscio, Roberto Sacco, Alessandra Bresciani, Mimmo Frammartino, Daniela Puzzo, Francesco Gigliotti, Assunta Mascaro and the prime minister, Giuseppe Mazzuca. The signatories are obviously not in favor of the appeal to the TAR proposed by the municipal council.