Like a lightning bolt in a clear sky. On a normal Thursday in full summer (albeit the temperatures of the last few days they are refreshing Calabria from Pollino to Strait), Roberto Occhiuto has further decided to spread the cards and play a completely new game.
Loted and a little put on the corner by the recent judicial investigation that has raised many stomach ache among some of the allies (perhaps more at national than local level), the chief of the executive has chosen the road of the early elections. It was perhaps the only way not to start, immediately after the Augustan heat, a year of attrition and election campaign that would bring him to winding roads in which to extricate themselves. A year, until the natural expiry of the mandate (October 2026) in which Occhiuto should have managed on the one hand the boiling potato of an investigation that likes or not has a little clouded the image of the president of the regional council, and on the other the possibility of a series of obstacles to be overcome first inside his coalition with Premier Meloni and Fratelli d’Italia ready to take advantage of the difficulties of the Deputy Secretary and perhaps playing the presidential paper with Fausto Orsomerso, or maybe really with the former CISL secretary, Luigi Sbarra.
The perimeter of the coalition
And then Occhiuto, strong of the results achieved at the electoral level in the last period (just think of the election of Giusi Princi to the last European ones) and also of a undeniable consensus, went straight like a train and decided to risk the election paper. With him, in all likelihood, there will be brothers of Italy, Lega, we moderates, the UDC and obviously some civic list. The electoral force of the center -right will however be measured in front of the Calabrians, without forgetting that in the different administrative elections of recent years (although all subject to local dynamics in which the parties very often have acted on the basis of different choices) the government forces have suffered leaving the field to the center -left practically in all the provincial capitals. Clearly, the choice of Occhiuto will create messy and it will be up to him, together with the big names of the other parties, to compact everyone to face an election campaign practically upon us.
The photo with Minister Giuli and Wanda Ferro: then the Forza Italia convention in Reggio
The day after the announcement of the resignation through a video released through his social channels, the president of the Calabria Region, Roberto Occhiuto, posts a photo with the Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giuli, and the Undersecretary inside, Wanda Ferro. A moment of apparent normality that portrays the governor in a hotel in Catanzaro, in the Lido district, together with the minister, who yesterday stopped in the city to visit the construction site of the Duomo in renovation and the Biodiversity Park, with an inspection also on the outskirts of the Calabrian capital, in the Archaeological Park of the ancient Scolacium.
The resignation of the governor must still be formalized. The session of the regional council hypothesized for Tuesday 5 even before Occhiuto announced that he wanted to resign to recover, has not yet been set. For 3 pm at 3 pm an important event is scheduled in Reggio Calabria, the general states of the South of Forza Italia, a party of which Occhiuto is vice national secretary. It is in that context that the president could return to talk about his decision to resign.
Early elections: the third time in Calabria in recent years
Calabria is not new to early regional elections. In 2014 he went to vote on 23 November following the resignation of the then president Giuseppe Scopelliti. The natural deadline was March 2015, but after the passage back of the politician Reggino he anticipated a few months and the electoral competition was won by the center -left led by Mario Oliverio. To succeed Oliverio was Jole Santelli, elected president in the regional elections that took place in the middle of winter on January 26, 2020. However, following the premature disappearance of Cosenza politics, the Calabrians were called again to the vote in the autumn of 2021 (it was voted on 3 and 4 October) with the election of Occhiuto who had the best of Amalia Brui and Luigi de Magistris.