Cateno De Luca looks to the left. And he announces an ongoing dialogue with Carlo Calenda’s Azione in view of the European electionswhere smaller parties have to dodge the 4% trap. «We are thinking about an alliance that will protect us from the barrier. With Renzi or with Calenda? Renzi, with the political buying and selling of parliamentarians, has already thrown himself from the tower, he committed suicide by himself”, he states. And the need for South calls North – which in the assembly of 2 and 3 March in Rome will increasingly take the form of a national party – is to “make a choice” consistent with the position taken in Sicily which “sees us as strongly alternative to the Sicilian centre-right”. After the boom in consensus, Sicily is inevitably the political hub of the choices made by the mayor of Taormina. Who also reveals that, before the last regional elections, he refused a meeting with Silvio Berlusconi aimed at a candidacy with the centre-right. «It was Miccichè who contacted me – he says during a press conference in the Chamber -. He did it too because he didn’t adore the good Schifani. I replied ‘Gianfranco, it’s not out of rudeness, but he didn’t have this meeting, even though I had already had a relationship with Berlusconi when the law for the redevelopment of the city of Messina was discussed. From that report Miccichè relaunched the proposal to run for governor for the center-right and I said no. I would never have been the president of Totò Cuffaro.”
De Luca makes it known that he is working to build a progressive Sicilian pole with the Pd and M5s, “an alternative area to this centre-right, which will break the bank”. De Luca starts from here and does not exclude that, in the future, it could be part of a national progressive camp: «It could be a natural consequence, a southernist movement within a centre-left area. That’s probably what he’s missing.” The conference in Montecitorio was convened to talk about the political developments and prospects of South Calls North and new memberships. Like that of Francesco Zicchieri, former Northern League member, who moved to IV for a short period, who will now lead the party in Lazio as commissioner. Laura Castelli has no doubts: what she is defining is “the path of a movement that can now be called national”. «We aim to build and get elected», unlike those who «are merchants for a living – lashes out De Luca -. We aim for good administration, which has no political color.”