There is a new episode in the “We loved each other so much” saga starring the broken couple Basile-Germanà. Those who remember them together in the living room of the Northern League senator, after Cateno De Luca’s serenade, or on the stage in Piazza Duomo to celebrate the election of the mayor, find it difficult to understand how they arrived, instead, at the now frequent clashes and ferocious attacks which, in particular, the parliamentarian reserves for the mayor whom he strongly supported in the electoral campaign two years ago. Yet the climate is constantly tense, even now that this year’s electoral campaign – the European elections – has ended. An electoral campaign characterized by a watershed moment, in Sicily, seen by many as a gigantic commercial for the vote, with lights in favor of… centre-right: the signing of the agreement between State and Region, signed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the governor Renato Schifani, on the new programming of the Development and Cohesion Funds.
The famous “FSC”, which has been much discussed and which saw the city of Messina receive a smaller slice of the cake than those reserved for Palermo and Catania, with the municipalities of the province also on a war footing. Excluding the Bridge over the Strait, obviously, which in this case once again becomes a “local” work, from Messina, and not of international scope. Of course, with 1.3 billion allocated to the Bridge, Messina would take the lead.
But without that it isn’t like that and the mayor Federico Basile isn’t happy with it, just as he isn’t happy with yet another attack from senator Nino Germanà, who said: «Unfortunately, Mayor Basile not only did not understand what role he should have played in this planning process of the Cohesion Agreement with the Region, but has never even provided input or requests to the national delegation to be supported in order to effectively represent the interests of the territory it is supposed to administer. This lack demonstrates, once again, a lack of vision for development, a clear inability for strategic planning and institutional dialogue, once again revealing its evident inadequacy in planning and managing the future of the city”.
Basile doesn’t agree: «Germanà perhaps doesn’t remember that we had declared ourselves available for a discussion, with him, on the topic of European funds and FSCs – says the mayor –. What matters most, however, is that what was safeguarded in this operation was not Messina, but the interests of some. The senator talks about programming, but what programming? We have presented various projects, both as a metropolitan city and as a municipality and through investee companies, and we have presented the projects that we considered most useful to the territory. Because, I want to remind you, this is what FSC funds are for, the territory, and nothing else. And therefore projects on the water network, on roads, on junctions. Let it be clear that a mayor must not present himself to the President of the Region with hat in hand or genuflecting in front of a political party. It does not work like that. The truth is that these funds were taken away from local projects to finance the first expenses related to the Bridge. I just don’t know if and when I’ll see the Bridge, but we would certainly have seen the works we had proposed – concludes Basile –.