Mimmo Bevacqua, leader of the Democratic Party in the regional council, breaks the silence. And he intervenes in the heated debate that is characterizing the phase following the approval of the law establishing the Single City. A law voted by 25 councilors and proposed by the Democrats.
Bevacqua, why did you choose to promote the Single City?
“Those who command in political and legislative processes have the levers of power in their hands but, if they are motivated by irrationality and arrogance, they can do great damage, formal and substantial. Those who oppose democratically have two roads ahead: choose to oppose always and in any case, in the sterile contrast of a small wall against a larger wall; or use and induce reasonableness and, when it is not possible or is only possible in part, dilate the times and trust in the opportunities that arise. On the single city of Cosenza in the regional council we chose the second road and I am very satisfied with our work: not being able to intervene directly on the blitz of the majority that deprived the City Councils of being the starting engine, we made sure to give the process two years to recover that democratic participation and rationalization that risked being wiped out”.
Can we therefore define her as the “winner” and not only the moral one of this delicate political phase?
“I haven’t won anything at all and those who know me know how culturally distant I am from useless individual battles. We have achieved a great result, that’s for sure.”
Yet for months, if not years, the opposition in the regional council has been portrayed as too soft if not downright ideal for Occhiuto, isn’t that right?
«Fortunately, in politics above all, facts count. Just look at the battles often fought alone on many issues: differentiated autonomy, healthcare, lack of resources for internal areas, mobility. However, we have never given in to instrumentality and populism that ends up harming politics. As for the issue of the merger, we even abandoned the Chamber against the wound and the coup of the single city of Cosenza imposed by law, trampling on the role and function of the city councils. Anything but a tender opposition! And for months we continued to protest in the appropriate venues against a normative violence and a social and civil ugliness. After that, we return to the crossroads mentioned above. We were elected to always bring home the maximum possible for our citizens and we did it. It was not the time of the sterile “no” to the single city by law. They would have gone ahead like a train anyway, which is why we chose the path of the counterattack proposal. The single city is fine, let’s have a referendum and ask citizens what they think about it and in any case we won’t talk about it before 2027. Does that seem like a small thing to you?