«With the sentence of no place to proceed “because the fact does not exist” the last act of the judicial proceedings which began following a serial production of complaints and complaints filed by the exponent of the Democratic Party Demetrio Naccari-Carlizzi was concluded to attack the centre-right councils who have governed the City for a decade. I must say that I faced the proceedings before the Gup with great serenity, with the strength of my conscience and in the awareness of the objective inconsistency of the accusations made. However, I felt a feeling of bitterness for having had to retrace the “season of poisons” which led Reggio to a state of degradation never reached.”
He is still bitter, despite the Gup’s acquittal, the former mayor Demetrio Arena. And he explains it: «My administration, which operated for only 17 months, took office in May 2011, when the violent and cynical offensive against the then governor of Calabria and his ruling class had already begun. The action started in the political sphere and was fueled thanks to a virulent media initiative. The centre-left, which never accepted and metabolised the two resounding electoral defeats suffered by Scopelliti in 2002 and 2007, after initiating an instrumental legal action, orchestrated an unprecedented media campaign which, through a gigantic network of lies, built the Big Hoax of the infamous “budget hole”. In that scenario, my Administration, as soon as it took office, carried out with commitment, transparency and professionalism the much requested and demanded “truth operation” on the Municipality’s accounts, by ascertaining the budget deficit in its real consistency, i.e. 118 million euros, a figure far removed from those imaginative hypotheses represented by the newspapers which, instead, reported sums close to a billion euros”.