Political activity at Palazzo Zanca is in a “warming up” phase. The city council got back on track last week and did so by listening in the chamber to the annual reports of Mayor Federico Basile, his councilors and the heads of the participating companies. On Wednesday, it will be the turn of the city councilors – the word to the prosecution, one would say if we were in court – to ask questions and make observations regarding the narrative presented so far on the first two years of Basile’s administration. An opportunity to take a few shots at the opposition, which has “grown” numerically in this first part of the mandate.
But other dynamics, internal to the council, are taking centre stage in the corridors of Palazzo Zanca. Rumours of a more than probable reshuffle are chasing each other, the entry into the team of the president of Sud chiama Nord, the former vice-minister (at the time she was a member of the Five Star Movement) Laura Castlesit now seems obvious. It remains to be seen, however, in what role, because there are those who insistently whisper that she could do it as deputy mayor, to the detriment – as already happened when Cateno De Luca was mayor – of Salvatore Mondello. The latter seems to have been offered the presidency of Atm Spa, also given here as imminent the exit of Pippo Campagnacalled to manage full-time the increasingly strategic Asm of Taormina. The management of the transport company, however, would not interest Mondello, who could therefore, in the end, remain in the Council, while the current councilor for Public Education should be leaving, Peter Curro.
That this is a delicate moment for the Basile administration is also confirmed by the choice – also in the air for some time – to appoint a new expert (for a fee, 1,500 euros per month). Or rather, an expert: the journalist Valeria Brancato, from Santa Teresa di Riva, who after having managed the communication of the electoral campaigns of De Luca and Basile himself, now enters “the palace”. Not as a press officer for the Municipality – the law provides other ways –, but as a consultant for the political communication of the mayor and the Administration, as is already happening with the water crisis.
