“Today many Municipalities commissioned for having left behind practices on illegal building – from Praia a Mare to Sellia Marina, from Isola Capo Rizzuto to Figline, from Nocera Terinese to Vibo Valentia, from Tortora to Zumpano, up to Mendicino – have started a positive dialogue with the Region, meeting Salvatore Siviglia or speaking by telephone, director general of the Territory and Environmental Protection Department. The attitude was constructive on both sides, the climate relaxed and serene, the common goal is to remedy as soon as possible the abuses protagonists of the deliberation of the Giunta. Other administrations, however, such as that of Castrovillari, led by the mayor, Mimmo Lo Polito, have decided to shut themselves up in the dark rooms of their municipal archives to try to justify their own blunder to the citizens, using this argument as a pretext to politically attack President Roberto Eyey”.
This is what the spokesman for the president of the Calabria Region, Roberto Occhiuto, writes in a note.
From preliminary checks to the Region, there is no communication from the Municipality of Castrovillari relating to the disputed abuse. Lo Polito complains about the media clamor that arose after the council’s resolution – by the way, President Occhiuto has for years had constant national visibility regardless of the recent events involving the Municipality of Castrovillari – and perhaps he is unaware that an initiative of this type has precedents in the history of the governments of the Calabria Region. For the Occhiuto administration, dear mayor, there are no good abuses or bad abuses, there are only abuses to be remedied as soon as possible, there is a culture of legality to be spread as much as possible. For us, this issue too is one of the ‘real Calabrian problems’. As well as health, the environment, water, waste: all issues for which the council has done more in a year and a half than previous regional governments have done in the last 30 years. Perhaps the mayor of Castrovillari – intent on absentmindedly measuring the width and height of the wooden sheds present in his municipality – did not notice anything. But the Calabrians do, so much so that President Occhiuto is the most popular governor of the South, fourth in Italy for trust on the part of citizens. As for possible civil actions evoked by Lo Polito, this regional administration is certainly not intimidated by such threats. The Giunta Occhiuto has demonstrated in recent months that it knows how to take, where necessary, even unpopular decisions with a single guiding star: the good of Calabria. From purification to health management, from reclamation consortia to unauthorized use, from firefighting to water and waste management. The regional government is not afraid to break patterns encrusted by years of immobility to viscerally reform the Region and to build a better future for this land. If all this triggers the stomach ache of some mayor or some power group, we’ll deal with it. But we will continue to follow the path we have taken with conviction”.