vote on the terrain of the former employers – Corriere.it

In Livorno the atmosphere is hot but this time climate change has little to do with it. To inflame spirits, complete with transversal and internal political controversies, committees that invade with banners and protests the city council and persistent rumors of alleged conflicts of interest, it is the variant to the Structural Plan (approved yesterday) defined by the oppositions of the right and left as “the sack of the city” and above all the decision to build a multifunctional gym (called the Cubone) in a green area of ​​a suburban district. The
Inhabitants have asked to build it on partially built-up land where a number of villas will be built, but the municipality, led by the mayor, said no. And so far nothing extraordinary.

The problem is that the inhabitants of the neighborhood have discovered that the alternative land that they had proposed to build the gymnasium, the one adjacent to the villas that will be built, is owned by the Fremuras, one of the three most important families in the city, also owner of a television station (Grand Duchy TV) with headquarters in Livorno and a Tuscan catchment area, where, before the leave, the mayor of the city, Luca Salvetti, a freelance journalist, was employed.

The first controversies arrived in the City Council, with a dramatic face-to-face between one of the leaders of the committee and the mayor himself, protests from the opposition, demonstrations and malicious, but unproven, hypotheses of conflicts of interest.

With the result of provoking in the city a transversal political turmoil of the opposition left (Buongiorno Livorno, Potere al Popolo and Cinque Stelle), while on the right even the repudiation of the group leader of Fratelli d’Italia, the police inspector Andrea Romiti, who had asked the mayor to abstain as an employee on leave of Fremura, but had been denied by the party itself. Who even, with his local leaders, decided to call Salvetti to warn him that they disagreed with his party mate. Thus Romiti, already a candidate for mayor precisely against Salvetti, was forced to leave FdI and join the mixed group. It is not excluded that he enters the League.

«I have not accused anyone of a conflict of interest – explains Romiti -, I only said that, as an employee of Fremura, the mayor had to absolutely not deal with the question, which he instead took good care of doing. As a police inspector in Livorno, I went to work in Pisa so as not to contradict a public principle, that of the potential impartiality of the administration». Compact the left opposition speaking of «a matter of opportunity as big as a house». Costanza Vaccaro (Mixed group) then explained that the Salvetti junta would have had three years to reformulate the urban plan of the area but did not do so, causing the time to expire. The Democratic Party defends the mayor speaking of a “mud machine”.

Luca Salvetti speaks instead of ridiculous accusations and depressing allusions and explains that not only has he never favored his employer before being elected mayor, but on two occasions measures were taken that were not favorable to him. In short, no mess. Yet there are those who, with malice, remember how Granducato Tv, the television of the Fremura family, has given politics several characters: the current mayor Luca Salvetti, the regional councilor Francesco Gazzetti, the former city councilor and president of the city council Vezio Benetti. Salvetti was launched as mayor, a very successful operation after the M5S had surprisingly conquered the city, interrupting 69 years of domination by the former PCI, was the then MP Andrea Romano. Also linked to Granducato TV.

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