The resignation (and simultaneous re-candidacy) of the President of the Calabria Region, Roberto Occhiuto, has little to do with political reasons: it must be understood as part of a farcical electoral strategy aimed at limiting the fallout from a possible future conviction for corruption. However, as we have already stated in the past, the anti-people and classist nature of Occhiuto’s administration needs no confirmation from the judiciary.
The centre-right administration has done little over the years to address the root causes of the healthcare disaster in Calabria: the cuts to the National Health Fund, the inequitable distribution of that fund, and the ever-growing economic and political weight of private healthcare. In fact, in recent years, some private institutions under public contract have seen their budgets grow exponentially. Occhiuto, both in his role as regional governor and as healthcare commissioner—and now also as commissioner in charge of hospital system reforms—has facilitated this entire process.
Consistent with his political affiliation, the outgoing governor has avoided any action to protect Calabrian workers, historically among the most exploited in the country, especially in the seasonal tourism sector. Meanwhile, he has spent public money on subsidies for employers through a variety of instruments, most recently the so-called “Fri Calabria” fund, which allocates over 100 million euros to local businesses. He has also promoted yet another technical extension of the Calabrian beach concessions, and even that colossal real estate scheme known as the Messina Strait Bridge, while infrastructure and services that are actually useful to the region’s inhabitants have been neglected for decades.
Regarding the differentiated autonomy project—which we have called a proposal designed to divide the country in order to increase the power of the employers—Roberto Occhiuto voted in favor of the measure during the State-Regions Conference (a binding body on this issue), only to later start criticizing the provision in an attempt to justify himself to his electorate.
The alternative to Occhiuto cannot be the Democratic Party (PD) or the so-called “broad alliance” formed by the PD and other forces that serve only to attract the more “left-leaning” electorate. The first step in promoting a different model for governing the region is to acknowledge that the PD was the primary agent behind the cuts to public healthcare (with nearly 40 billion euros withdrawn from the National Health Service in recent years), the cuts to local authority funding, and the dismantling of workers’ rights. This party, just like those of the centre-right, maintains various ties with local economic and financial power structures and is an expression of those same interests. The Five Star Movement (M5S), through its pandemic management policies that favored business, the scam of the “Decreto Calabria” (which solved none of the issues mentioned above), and the appointment of General Cotticelli as Health Commissioner, was no less damaging to the popular classes of Calabria. The bourgeois and anti-people nature of these parties has been clearly revealed in the conditions of wage earners—Calabrian and otherwise—whose real wages dropped by 10% over three years of government led by these very forces. Anyone who, from the “left,” decides to support a coalition led by these parties will be responsible for yet another operation aimed at preserving the interests of Calabria’s capitalist class under the rhetorical guise of a “battle against the right.”
We are convinced that what Calabria needs is not just a change in the sponsor of these interests, but a revolution. It is necessary to organize workers and the popular strata, to bring together the truly combative forces—such as people’s committees, the unemployed, and students—to build a class-based organization that defends the interests of the majority, that fights for a fully public and properly funded healthcare system, for wage increases and the strengthening of workers’ power in the workplace, and for the use of public resources solely to fund services and infrastructure that support the development of the most oppressed and marginalized sectors of the community.
We believe this is a goal to be pursued in the long term through steady and coherent work—not dictated by electoral deadlines.
Calabria belongs to those who can truly create wealth for all!
Workers, students, unemployed—organized we will win!
Calabria Federation of the Communist Front of Italy
Communist Youth Front
