The political quarrel over the staff of the municipal administration of Napoli, a handful of appointments (to which, according to rumours, other new entries should be added shortly), is the clear signal of "the inability of the mayor Gaetano Manfredi to open up to the city's ruling class".
The emphasis is on Fulvio Martusciello, a member of the European Parliament and regional coordinator of Forza Italia. Martusciello, who has been reorganizing the Azzurri for months in view of the administrative elections in May and in perspective for the regional elections in 2025, after having reunited the center-right front, has launched a campaign of strong opposition to the municipal administration resulting from the Pd-M5s alliance, fighting both on the lack of services in the city and on purely political issues such as, precisely, that of the staff.
Among the 9 contracts signed by Manfredi in recent days to strengthen his and the councilors' collaborators, there is also the case of Ciro Cinquegrana, revealed by the newspaper Il Roma, who only last January had been chosen as FI coordinator in the second city municipality, immediately removed from the role by Martusciello himself.
But there are, above all, most indicate, supermarket cashiers, pizza chefs and people who boast a third grade education. Corridor rumors, however, because as the same blue coordinator emphasizes, "the CVs of the chosen ones are not available. There is no transparency, where instead there is a legal obligation".
For this reason, Martusciello intends to bring the issue to the table of the Minister of Public Administration, Paolo Zangrillo, through a question addressed to him by parliamentarians from Campania. Minister who will be in Naples on March 13 for a discussion within the framework of a public initiative with Manfredi.
“There is also the issue of waste of public resources, in addition to the violation of a rule when collaborators of councilors and the mayor are chosen from among those who participated in the electoral campaign without an evaluation of their CVs – explains Martusciello – meritocracy is therefore not an aspect that interests Manfredi.
I think any magistrate can legitimately ask what happened also on the basis of the press articles already published by local newspapers. Electoral corruption? We defer to the evaluations of any magistrate". The MEP, however, promises constant attention on Naples.
“I have lived and live in this city and I am interested in its functioning, in its being a European capital,” he says. “The role of the opposition is to spur on good administrative actions. And I intend to continue it. The Neapolitans now almost miss Luigi de Magistris. Manfredi is not a good mayor.”
Starting from the management of tourism, an important economic asset that is now seeing record numbers, but which "first of all needs to be given more serious governance, starting with a reflection on the Capodichino airport, together with that of Pontecagnano", warns Martusciello.
“We are witnessing a confused development of the tourist and cultural offer – he notes – and there is even a lack of a Department of Culture in the Municipality and in the Region. The offer is ultimately reduced to that of food and 'color'. A bit little for a city that can boast an unparalleled heritage of artistic, architectural and landscape assets”.
There is even a lack of information points that are not isolated gazebos, he adds. But "the possibility of making them work is linked to the existence of a modern tourism company, instead we have in Naples and Campania only obsolete structures in the process of liquidation - says Martusciello - and Campania is never a protagonist of important tourism fairs because there is no real planning, but we proceed with minimal choices, as for the collaborators of the mayor and the councilors".
In this panorama, there is also the friction between the Municipality and the Region over the San Carlo theater, which "without institutional help cannot hold up. The report of the representative of the Region in the board of directors of the Foundation, Riccardo Realfonzo, is dramatically true, but it cannot be used as an instrument of blackmail. The oldest opera house in the world, which lives on public funding, cannot be used for political struggle".
And private individuals? “Private individuals have often seen institutions as a cash cow,” explains Martusciello. “We need to recreate a sense of community, also offering a concrete hope of returning to being central to the country’s economic and political life. But if they see someone with a middle school diploma appointed as a staff member, what should they think?”
Meanwhile, Martusciello has united the center-right with a method of action that follows his philosophy of "in advance and in agreement". "To work and find mayoral candidates, we have changed the model, and we go to May 15th having already chosen - he observes - there is a big difference in the program between the center-left and M5s on the opposite front. Up to now they have chosen for convenience to stay together, but this has its limits. In 2025 there is no match, we win". And he awaits an answer from Manfredi on the staffers.
Article published on March 7, 2023 - 14pm
Interesting analysis on political appointments in Naples, it seems that there are really problems of transparency and competence.