Yet another act of the political soap opera that is animating Palazzo d’Orleans after the Armao earthquake. The Regional Council met this morning for what, apparently, is an ordinary session, with 13 points on the agenda ranging from health appointments (such as the director’s chair of Cefpas) to protocols with the Catania Prosecutor’s Office, up to the classic “tips” to counteract the “expensive fuel” between agriculture and fishing.
Yet, the atmosphere inside the Region’s rooms was anything but serene. Throughout yesterday, in fact, the corridors of Palermo politics were plagued by increasingly insistent rumors about the possible resignation of the governor. What triggered Schifani’s nervousness was the abrupt halt that came from the leaders of his own party, Forza Italia, with the regional commissioner Nino Minardo who froze the president’s ambitions by eliminating – or at least freezing – any certainty about his second mandate. A real creeping distrust that had pushed the former president of the Senate to contemplate the great refusal.
Today, however, the strategic retreat seems to have prevailed over the gesture of pride. Schifani arrived at the meeting reserving the final communications to make his leadership weigh, while around him the councilors were busy throwing water on the fire in a “catwalk” of declarations aligned to banish the nightmare of an early vote: Giusi Savarino who proudly claims the accounts are in order and the promise of the budget by the end of the year; Edy Tamajo who assures with conviction that the legislature “must continue because so much good has been done”; the Councilor for Economy Alessandro Dagnino is pushing for the budget change and the stability law to secure the government’s path; while from Elvira Amata a dry “if the legislature ends, it certainly doesn’t depend on me”. The Council ended with the approval of the items on the agenda, without Schifani making any reference to his resignation after the crisis opened with the leaders of Forza Italia due to the party’s about-face on his re-nomination for the second mandate.
It was not and has not been the table for settling accounts. There was no space for a discussion on the alleged resignation or in any case to address the issue of the announced “imminent responsible decisions”. The topic will probably be postponed to the middle of next week when the head of the Sicilian executive, the Italian leader Antonio Tajani and the regional commissioner, Nino Minardo, are expected to meet in the capital.
For the moment only a unanimous chorus, in short, to say that the matter is moving forward, even if the political crack within the center-right remains wide open and the maneuvers seem to have only just begun.
Meanwhile, in the center-left, the leader of Controcorrente Ismaele La Vardera makes no concessions: “Sicily is tormented by investigations and arrests and the center-right names all the names for candidacy, boasting of virginity that it has lost for years now.” “While the council meeting is underway, I read press papers where everyone is ready to run as candidates or propose names. We are talking about people who have already been in government for 10 years, and who are chasing a political virginity that they don’t have. All the parties of the current majority have been investigated and arrested. Sicily looks astonished at this unseemly spectacle and waits for politics to be able to deal with the expensive fuel, the hospitals in pieces and the dilapidated ones. We have been clear Schifani he has the obligation to report to the chamber, if he does not do so we will block any attempt to discuss the change without parliamentarizing a crisis that can no longer be swept under the carpet”.