Between two Sundays, in Reggio Calabria, the polls will open for the centre-left primaries to choose the candidate for mayor. Yesterday the first confrontation between the three candidates took place in Maurizio Insardà’s Sunday lounge on Antenna Febea radio. And Giovanni Muraca (the moderate), Massimo Canale (the heretic) and Mimmo Battaglia (the mediator, who managed the miracle of making Irto and Falcomatà sit at the same table) gave life to a “high noon” worthy of Sergio Leone’s best spaghetti western. A civil confrontation but with no holds barred, very frank and, in the words of Pierluigi Bersani, without pretending not to see “the cow in the corridor”. All three with strong demo roots – even if Canale today feels very “orange” and Muraca very reformist – have provided a different vision of Reggio and of the things they would like to do once chosen by voters as candidates for mayor.
Maso Canale has placed as the foundation of his entry into the field the need to “rebuild a direct relationship with the suburbs and the citizens, because the Democratic Party, which has been my home for years, has proven lacking in this aspect and the civic push of “Onda Orange” can be that extra something to retune politics with the wavelength of the people of Reggio”. Muraca explained that he arrived at Casa Riformista «because, with my group, we believed in this moderate project and also because, despite having nothing against the Democratic Party, we believe we have a large political space in the city and in the metropolitan area. However, we will always work within the wide field.” Battaglia, as the only candidate of the Democratic Party, consistently claimed that «to govern the city you need credibility» and that he wants to continue «to work to make Reggio grow in the wake of the many good things done by the Falcomatà Administration starting with securing the city’s accounts». And precisely “on the many good things” done by the Falcomatà Administration, Canale made things clear: «We cannot, however, forget that Reggio is in last place in the quality of life rankings, so something more could certainly have been done. And with great intellectual honesty we should ask ourselves whether all the political choices made by Falcomatà were made in the interests of the citizens.”
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