“Yes to a Single City, No to a Farce Referendum”: Caruso’s Thought

The Single City is Dividing the Center-Left. Mayor Franz Caruso intervenes in the debate using both the sabre and the foil. Caruso, the controversies are daily and you are often pulled by the jacket: why?

“Much ado about nothing. Or rather, I am becoming more and more convinced that the objective for some is not to create a single city, but to exploit the issue of fusion for functional positioning in political and power struggles.”

Let’s take a step back: are you in favor or against the single city?

“The merger between Cosenza, Rende and Castrolibero was the strategic point of the program on which I asked for the confidence of the people of Cosenza. In my electoral program, the proposal for a single city was unequivocal. In the municipal elections, I even allowed myself to indicate the time of the conclusion of the current municipal council as the deadline for its implementation. In some positions that have appeared in the press in recent days, however, there is a clumsy attempt to distort my position and that of the majority of Palazzo dei Bruzi. Anyone who plays this game is either foolish or in bad faith. Very enlightening, in this sense, is the statement by Giacomo Mancini published in Gazzetta del Sud: a real poisoned fake. With cloying nonchalance, the mayor of Cosenza is accused of “being entrenched in the no in defense of his own seat”. An irresponsible way to generate confusion and disorientation in public opinion. Furthermore, a very contradictory interview: he praises and shares the consultative referendum wanted by Occhiuto and the center-right but at the same time he then supports what that type of electoral consultation excludes and that is that if in a Municipality the “no” were to prevail, that Municipality would be removed from the merger project. And then, he sets himself up as a champion of the single city, so much so that he does it immediately and even without waiting for the times indicated so far by the Region, but at the same time he agrees with his friend Sandro Principe who has never made a secret of his opposition to a merger that is not intended as the arrival of a preliminary completion of a union project. So young Mancini should come to an agreement with himself: is he in favor or not of the single city as the Region wants it? Is he in favor or not of the referendum as the center-right wants it? In the meantime, as far as we are concerned, we cannot but interpret the speciousness and instrumentality of his continuous positions on the administration of Palazzo dei Bruzi, after my election as mayor, if not by resorting to Freud.

Excuse me if I insist: are you in favor of the merger project or not?

“My position is clear and straightforward. I have consistently expressed my “yes” to the single city, without ifs or buts, during the electoral campaign, in the City Council, during the hearing in the competent Regional Council Commission of Palazzo Campanella, on every public occasion and repeatedly declared in the press.”

Is there something you’re not happy with?

«I ask again and, this time, I hope that an answer will come: what need was there for the center-right to change the law on which the mergers of Corigliano Rossano and Casali del Manco were born? Why did they cancel the rule that provided that the municipal councils were to arrange the referendum question? These questions raise several issues. First of all, the “how” a merger project is implemented is not irrelevant. There is no doubt that the merger process must start from the bottom. The Region is called to organize and govern the merger process on the basis of the expression of the will of the territorial institutions. A law that sees only the Region as the sole protagonist in the legislative and administrative process, for the merger between municipalities, violates the principle of the sovereignty of the popular will. According to the rule imposed by the majority of the Regional Council, at any time the President of the Region will be able to dissolve any Municipal Council, citing the reason of the merger with a neighboring Municipality, since the referendum is consultative and does not take into account at all the Municipal Councils established by popular mandate. Nor is the thesis, supported by some, that once the electorate has expressed itself, it will not be possible to proceed against the referendum result valid in this regard. The Hon. Anna Laura Orrico said it very well. I agree with her: without the rule that explicitly states the constraint, that referendum is a bogus one. After all, if it is so obvious that the popular will would be taken into account anyway, what difficulty would there have been in not approving a rule that provided for the binding nature of the referendum? It is no coincidence that, beyond the single city of the urban area of ​​Cosenza, there are already dozens of Municipalities that claim full respect for their functions and constitutional prerogatives. Some Municipalities have already done so, others have spoken out in favor of the request by the City Councils to repeal a law, that of the consultative referendum, which to say the least is to be defined as at least illiberal. In fact, it could really be configured that, according to the amendment made by the center-right, the purpose of that regional law is not so much that of defining the merger procedure, but that of attributing to the President of the Region the power to dissolve the City Councils that the Constitution and the current national legislation assign solely to the President of the Republic».

The law approved was proposed by the Democratic Party, that is, by its allies: what do we do about it?

“As for the proposal of the regional group of the Democratic Party on the postponement to 2027, I have already expressed myself in Gazzetta del Sud. The issue is not that of time but that of respect for democratic and constitutional principles. I reiterate, far from being entrenched in defense of the seat, that I am available to resign as mayor on the same day that the legislation that consistently implements Article 133 of the Constitution and which provides for the constraint of the pronouncement of the interested municipal councils is reinstated by the Regional Council. A merger prefigures the birth and not the abortion of the unborn entity only if it is the result of a shared and non-imposing law. And then frankly, how can we not pursue the objective of a method shared with the interested municipalities, for a merger project that concerns a capital city with municipal coffers in financial difficulty, a municipality under special administration and another municipal council that has already largely expressed itself in favor of the “no”? Come on, common sense and responsibility are required on this, if we want the single city to be an advantage for citizens and not an institutional alchemy of pure and simple interest of power but all to the detriment of the territories. The suspicion that the modification of the founding law could also have been a diversion, operated by Occhiuto and the center-right, to avoid discussing the real contents is not so unfounded. Lingering on procedures and not discussing the investments that the single city requires is not a secondary aspect. To date the Region has not decided anything on the extraordinary financial support for the new municipal body”.