Elections Naples, the challenge of the new mayor: not to give the best of youth to the Camorra
Only a few hours to go until the polls are open. This is a different election. In Naples, the turning point is invoked, the miracle. San Gennaro, the patron saint of the city, has already done his. It’s up to the Neapolitans, never like now, to roll up their sleeves and take care of their beloved city. There is someone who, to describe the current conditions in which large parts of the metropolis are in the shadow of Vesuvius, rely on the prose of the Neapolitan writer Matilde Serao who in 1884 published ‘Il ventre di Napoli’.
A story, in fact, from the ‘belly’, that is, come on slum neighborhoods, overflowing with poor and maladjusted, immersed in backwardness and indecent urban decay. An unfair comparison, dictated by anger, by the frustration of the capacity of a city by the big ones, a former European capital has been folded, and by decades on itself city: lazy, renouncing, ‘immobile’. It is no coincidence that Antonio Genovesi coined the term ‘nonsipuotism‘to signal the endemic deep and incurable feeling of the Neapolitan nature of the impossibility of changing things.
The path that awaits, therefore, the four main candidates Gaetano Manfredi, Catello Maresca, Alessandra Clemente and Antonio Bassolino is very tough. The problems of Naples are complex as the rest of the emergencies: from debt in the meantime it has grown to 3.5 billion and which will weigh like a boulder on the shoulders of the new mayor up to ethically unworthy economic, social and educational inequalities within the city and in relation to the country system that sees the South discriminated, outraged and robbed respect to the North. Geographical imbalance determined by the effects of the aggressive policies of Berlusconi’s twenty-year period with Lega Nord traction: from secessionist celodurism to fake federalism.
In Naples, in particular, the pandemic fury has widened the poverty gap, discomfort and suffering. The shock wave has crumbled the middle class, marginalizing the poorest part of the city. Addò eat duie, ponno even eat three (where they eat two, they can eat even three) is not only an ancient adage but represented the instinctive and inclusive protection of the poorest classes.
That ‘solidarity panaro’ popped up in the historic center, a few steps from the church of Gesù Nuovo, it is not accidental. The “Who can put, who can not take” was invented by the doctor and saint Giuseppe Moscati at the beginning of the twentieth century to help and assist the poor-poor. Now in the post-covid that ‘solidarity panaro’ has been definitively emptied. Throw away the mists of torpor, the city is in ruins. There is a metropolis to be rebuilt, reconnected and pacified. Naples it must become a normal city. It may seem trivial, a slogan but it is not.
The new mayor must have a reminder, an agenda of priorities, in the first hundred significant days that give the sense of a turning point. Naples must go back to being the capital of Southern Italy. The challenge is enormous. We need a class of public administrators. There are many things to do. Between these the most urgent is to secure the new generations.
The city can no longer ‘give’ its ‘best youth’ to the Camorra. The statues, the altars, the murals, the symbols are indications of a broadening of the social consensus towards a criminogenic subculture. Not necessarily one is camristi, but his conduct is divulged. The ‘Taliban Camorra’ with long beards, obsessive tattoos, standardized movements with the excessive use of Tik Tok and similar social networks represent themselves to promote themselves and transmit their tribal belonging to the outside world. No longer traditional clans but ‘Camorra gangs’ and therefore more dangerous.
The theme of the fight against the Camorra is central, can not be delegated only to the judiciary and the police. The new mayor must be aware of this. Fighting early school leaving, educational youth discomfort, building training courses at work can present the figure of an entire syndicate. On big issues such as the regeneration and transformation of former industrial zones from the eastern to the western periphery, one can no longer go wrong. The president Mario Draghi in attributing to the mayor of Naples, i Commissioner powers for the reclamation of the former industrial area of Bagnoli was clear: “The Neapolitans have been waiting for thirty years”. The huge resources of the Pnrr and additional European funds cannot be hoped for. Now it’s up to the candidates for the challenge for the good of Naples.