Regionals, Majorino’s gaffe: “Lombardy is not Calabria”. Occhiuto replies: “This is stupid”. And the candidate apologizes

“Lombardy is not Calabria, it is a region with great potential, a lot of people who get busy and are very busy in social and cultural projects”: last days of the electoral campaign in Lombardy and the candidate of Pd, M5S and centre-left Pierfrancesco Majorino slips on the eternal controversy between North and South. Phrases said on TV during a speech and immediately taken up by the governor of Calabria Roberto Occhiuto in a video that doesn’t send them saying: “But this is really stupid: this guy is a candidate for the presidency of the Region but above all he’s an idiot” because “he doesn’t know that Calabria, like Lombardy, has many opportunities and possibilities with people who go to work and who deserve respect, even his”. Occhiuto concludes by addressing Majorino in the Lombard dialect: “As my Lombard friends say, leave politics alone and go to university”.

Majorino, Pd MEP and former councilor for social policies of the Municipality of Milan, tries to close the controversy: “I wanted to apologize for an expression that came out a bit unhappy to me this morning in a television broadcast: it seemed, and this is because I said it wrong – explains Majorino – that I could refer to the Calabrian citizens, to their desire to do and their talents, absolutely”. Majorino assures his “Calabrian friends” that he did not intend to offend their “creativity and strength” and indeed “I believe that Lombardy and Calabria must collaborate even more for good development, cultural and health policies for all”. But “having said that – he concludes – I made a mistake and I apologize”.

He tries, in fact, to end the controversy, but who knows if he will succeed, given that the center-right is responding in many voices. “Mr. Majorino, in his propaganda delirium, discriminates against an entire region and reveals the true face of the left: he claims to be against differentiated autonomy, but in reality he is the first to offend those areas of the country which more than others deserve to obtain momentum, opportunities and resources, thanks to the provision of the centre-right.A candidate like this is unfit to govern Lombardy, not only due to manifest incapacity, but also because he lacks respect for Calabria, its citizens and all those who have been forced to emigrate to the North to work. Forget, the candidate of the left, that here with us there are many Calabrians, many Southerners, who have made our land great. And if today Lombardy is the most productive region of the country, the locomotive of Italy , it is also thanks to those who have left their land, their affections, their roots, to come here to lend a hand and to make us proud of what we are and what we can exhibit again than abroad”, attacks the president of the Forza Italia senators Licia Ronzulli.

And the MEP of Fratelli d’Italia Deni Nesci he presses on: “The honorable Majorino has shown himself to be an ignorant politician, since he evidently ignores how hard-working Calabria is, rich in excellence, history and positive examples”.