Just over three months before the municipal elections, a new twist arrives in Vibo. Mayor Maria Limardo has decided to stop and not run again. Here is the statement with which he announces that he will not take the field in the next electoral competition
“The five years that are about to end have been truly intense, hard, testing, but also exciting and full of satisfaction. They have certainly been years, in some ways, singular, during which I have never held back and never backed down of a millimeter despite legal storms, Covid, risk of collapse, staff exodus and gratuitous insults.
I thank my party, Forza Italia, for the investiture of these days. However, they were not easy days, during which events led me to rethink what is right for the coalition, but above all what is right – if I may – for me. I am ready to do my part, but not as a candidate for mayor.
I have always said that a political project to relaunch a city needs ten years to complete, an idea of which I remain convinced: the project must go ahead, because all the cards are there to win. Unlike the other sides who will rely on words and accusations, we will be able to speak with facts.
In fact, I believe that I am leaving a better city than how I inherited it and above all I am proud to have represented that change of pace which, although not yet perceived by everyone today, is certainly underway and has given the possibility of implementing a vision of a complete city, strategically advanced compared to the coming years.
I have always been moved by the desire to do and obtain the best for my city, my people, wearing the tricolor sash with honor and pride.
And this despite the gratuitous attacks, which are continuous and numerous and often unfounded and ungenerous. I remained in my position even when I would have liked to leave everything, absolutely aware of the mandate entrusted to me by the voters and of the duty to complete acts of fundamental importance for the life of the institution, for future generations, the common good and therefore that of the community administered, like those assumed in the last municipal council where, in addition to the green light for the important financing sent to the Municipality of Vibo Valentia, the process that led the city out of the crisis and to the achievement of the longed-for recovery was formally and definitively concluded financial.
In light of all this, I thank those who have placed their trust in me, but I am not open to re-nomination.”