Community Responds to Mayor’s Attack on Opposition Technical Member

“Disreputable, not to say shameful, are the repeated positions taken by the majority regarding the personal affairs of opposition members. The latest attack is the ethical incompatibility of the presence of the sole opposition technician in the municipal building commission.” The Comunità group, led by Ennio Bertolini, responds bluntly to the interrogation presented by the majority to Mayor Parolari against his representative, geometra Gianni Morandi from Nago.

“Apart from the fact — writes Comunità — that much of his activity is carried out outside the municipality and that every time a file of his comes before the commission, he leaves without being ‘invited’, as maliciously suggested in the interrogation-response that seems more like a self-interview by the mayor. Our technician, always present, has often ensured the quorum due to the chronic absence of technical-political representatives of the majority.”

It is surprising that the signatories reach such conclusions knowing that the appointment is legitimate and respects the mayor’s recommendations for competent appointments. And to think that, according to your ethics, the simultaneous appointment of the majority’s candidate, an independent architect working in the area, even awarded public works?

What about the appointment of a external councillor (former mayor) decisively rejected by the electorate? And the vote in the council for the public works program, which included a project valued at 500 million? A project obviously commissioned by his majority!

And the blatant favors repeatedly highlighted by the local press regarding the management of the town plan? Or the situation of the mayor as both overseer and overseen after the Court of Cassation’s ruling? And the fake news and continuous backtracking toward public opinion?

And the appointments of spouses who are teachers of councillors? And the ‘favelas’ of the 1960s, ‘legitimized’ by the removal of planned public parking spaces? Clearly, ‘planks in one’s own eye’ are hard to see.

The tendency of the signatories, perhaps driven only by antipathy, political hatred, and aversion toward those who do not share their views and line, has led them to consider their political opponent unworthy of esteem and respect, but as a harmful subject and enemy to be defeated. Our technician, competent and honest, will remain in his position even if he annoys a mayor who, through denigration, attempts to eliminate his opponents.

And his practices should be presented to the commission in chronological order of submission and not relegated to the last place, as the mayor has committed to doing. To the mayor who feels ridiculed if someone has different ideas, we suggest acknowledging the existence of a minority that fulfills its difficult task of oversight and stimulus.

We believe it is not at all wrong for a professional to be part of a commission, and we are amazed by such a discriminative stance toward a free citizen.