«A program that aims to implement, to ground, many of the reforms that were conceived and initiated in the last legislature». It is the one outlined by the President of the Calabria Region Roberto Occhiuto when presenting the programmatic lines of his council to the Regional Council. «I have tried – he continued – to be more prudent on some issues such as differentiated autonomy, such as the pre-agreements that some regions are making and which are simply political agreements but which can have an impact on social and civil rights. When the president of Calabria is represented in the national press as a center-right leader who raises questions, I think it’s a positive thing. There is this hateful prejudice against Calabrian politics, which is incapable of producing ideas, administrative actions that can be noted at a national level. I would like these 5 years of legislature to be stimulating also from this point of view.”
“I would like the next 5 years to be historic,” he said, focusing on the reforms initiated and those planned. “I would like the Council – he added – to become the place where motions are discussed that give the vision of an important region in the South with respect to issues that concern the future. I will continue to try to give this image of Calabria which, of course, has many problems and I have never hidden them but it has many potential resources. And I get a little angry instead when I see a part of national politics that looks at this region as one that only has problems. For this reason I would also like the dialectic within the Council was carried out with respect for the dignity and honor of Calabria.”
The idea on reforms
On the topic of reforms, Occhiuto anticipated some ideas regarding many sectors, from waste to civil protection, moving on to the use of confiscated assets up to healthcare, “a sector in which Calabria is no longer last, which is starting to leave the Commissionerate and, considering the fact that we have not had a deficit for three years, it could also leave the Recovery Plan”. Reforms which he defined as “tools for solving problems that otherwise would have been unsolvable”. Occhiuto then referred to the Bank’s data of Italy, “who have indicated Calabria as the region that has had the greatest increase in GDP in Italy. If they had written it in another region, the news would have occupied the front pages of the newspapers. We instead often enjoy speaking badly about the region, when there are aspects that should be highlighted”. of the southern shore of the Mediterranean. “It is an ambitious project – he said – which can tell a different Calabria, which understands that those countries are the ones that will have a greater increase in GDP than Europe and it does not want to suffer this process but to anticipate and govern”.