The President of the Calabria Region, Roberto Occhiuto, announced yesterday that he had received a notice of investigation for the crime of corruption, declaring that he is not at ease precisely because in recent years he “has governed the Region with absolute rigor.” According to the newspaper Domani, five people are reportedly involved in the investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Catanzaro, and among the other suspects is Paolo Posteraro, former manager of Amaco (the public transport company of the Municipality of Cosenza), former official of Ferrovie della Calabria, and currently head of the office of Matilde Siracusano, Undersecretary in the Meloni government and partner of the governor.
While we refrain from passing judgment on this episode of bourgeois justice—about which, moreover, the details are still unknown—we wish to recall that we communists do not need evidence proving Occhiuto’s ties with certain individuals or private entities in order to demonstrate the class nature of his politics and those of the parties he represents.
There are many examples that could be cited, starting with the most evident social tragedy in Calabria: the privatized management of public healthcare. The system has been under government commissioners for 15 years, with Occhiuto holding the triple role of Regional President, Healthcare Commissioner, and now also Special Commissioner for the implementation of interventions regarding the Region’s hospital system, following the Council of Ministers’ resolution of March 7. Through this triple role, Occhiuto continues to carry out and strengthen the privatization and anti-popular policies established by all recent governments: for example, by accepting cuts and disparities in the allocation of health funds, which have led Calabria to record the lowest per capita healthcare spending in the country, or by promoting the privatization process through which private healthcare expenditure now accounts for 30% of total healthcare spending in Calabria.
To this must be added a culpable indifference to the tragedy of labor exploitation in general, which reaches staggering levels in the private sector but also displays alarming peaks in the public sector in Calabria. Just think of the treatment reserved for so-called trainees in the Public Administration, who for years were forced to work without contracts in provincial or municipal offices. The solution found by Occhiuto a few months ago forced the older members of this category to accept a humiliating early retirement scheme—after having filled in for public employees for decades—that will oblige them to survive on a minimum pension for the rest of their lives. All of this while public money is being spent on subsidies for business owners through various instruments, most recently the so-called Fri Calabria fund, which allocates over 100 million euros to companies in the region.
As for the differentiated autonomy project—which we have defined as a proposal aiming to divide the country in order to increase the power of capitalists—Roberto Occhiuto voted in favor of the measure during the State-Regions Conference, a body with binding authority on this matter, only to begin criticizing the provision later in order to justify himself to his electorate. Occhiuto has also been actively involved in reinforcing territorial disparities, following in the footsteps of previous regional administrations. His administration has paid little or no attention—especially in terms of infrastructure—to the other provinces of the region, openly focusing on that of Cosenza (his political “fiefdom”) or, at best, on the Tyrrhenian coast, leaving the Ionian coast in its current disastrous state.
On many other longstanding issues in the Calabrian territory—such as the privatized management of water purification, which has for years caused inefficiencies and conflicts of interest—there has been no willingness to truly address the issue of private interests in environmental management. While local authorities—victims of indiscriminate cuts enacted by both the center-right and center-left—should urgently receive increased funding, and while the entire water cycle should be placed under public and transparent management, Occhiuto has merely allocated insufficient funds and directly attacked municipalities, blaming them for problems stemming from illegal dumping and poor wastewater treatment. Along the same lines, he has promoted yet another technical extension of the Calabrian beach concession licenses—true parasitic privileges that harm the environment and public resources—on the pretext that in Calabria “there is no scarcity of beach resources.” Finally, the governor has publicly expressed support for the wasteful, corrupt, and environmentally devastating project of the Bridge over the Strait, claiming that it is “appalling that there are southerners cheering against it.” Let us remember that with the 15 billion euros in public spending planned for this project, a quality and efficient public healthcare system could be built in our region within a few years.
For us communists, the problem with Roberto Occhiuto is not a judicial one—it is a political one. If this investigation reveals murky ties and entanglements between local politics and private interests, it will simply be a formal acknowledgment of the consequences of the President’s policies and those of the center-right more generally, which boast an unprecedented conflict of interest and merging of public and private interests. For us, the fight against this kind of politics has already been ongoing for years and can only continue through social struggle in the territories and in the workplaces.
Executive Secretariat of the Calabria Federation of the Communist Front
