From a hero to a fiend – and back again? Domenico “Mimmo” Lucano experienced a rollercoaster of emotions, as he describes it himself. “I am become the object of a big circus,” he says. For half a year Lucano not allowed to live 60 years old, at home, in his Riace, a village in Calabria, in the deepest South of Italy.
He was mayor of the town, had become the model case of a successful Integration of immigrants – is celebrated in Italy, praised in the whole world. Until last autumn, that was so. Then, the Guardia di Finanza, the tax police came and arrested Mimmo Lucano, as if he were a second-rate mobster. In the morning they arrested him.
Political climate change
It was said, Lucano have favored illegal immigration, marriages of convenience arranged between immigrants and Locals. And then he was awarded the garbage collection to two Cooperative, L’Aquilone and Ecoriace, without the order pre advertised.
He came temporarily under house arrest, by the office he was suspended. Above all, however, Lucano was not allowed to enter the soil of his village. “You have stolen from me the face”, says Lucano now. “My family have ruined them.”
He means not only the office of the public Prosecutor of Locri, which had formulated the charges. But also the national policy, Matteo Salvini , the Minister of the interior of Italy, and the baiting, the whole climate of hatred.
After the arrest frotzelte Lega-chief Salvini on the do-gooders, whom, allegedly, the laws of the country. He had called Lucano in front of it a “total Zero”. The world of the two views – they could not be further apart. Your dispute has degenerated into a fast to the faith of the war, two schools of thought.
Fully compliant
Lucano went in appeal against the ban on Residence, up to the highest court. Now, the court of cassation has decided in Rome that there is no evidence that Lucano have to keep the garbage collection is fraudulent the two Cooperatives. The decision was taken collegially, in the municipal administration, is completely rule-compliant.
The high court took the opportunity also to the fact that the two Cooperatives for disadvantaged people to give a Job, and that you go with a donkey door-to-door. So a good thing.
Also organizes marriages of convenience for the allegation that he had, there was no evidence. Lucano have a maximum of helped his own wife, an Ethiopian, in Italy. But he did so for “emotional reasons”. A System, a method? For this, there is no note. Lucano remembered now that his wife had received the citizenship, once directly by the state President with a decree.
The model Riace
Because Yes, before the political climate in Italy changed radically, was Riace a model, copy, dignity village. Lucano managed to revive the abandoned and hopeless place with a clever Integration.
Riace was one of those villages of the South, over the decades, many of their sons and daughters saw to move. Far away, to America and Australia. All castle: Bars, Restaurants, garages, shops.
Also, Lucano had been gone for a while. In 2004, he was mayor, and he opened the heart of Riace took. Soon a quarter of the 2300 inhabitants are immigrants. Instead of distributing you the 35 Euro daily allowance of the state, he presented them with the opportunity to work, sewing and pottery studios to open, a Bar, a Trattoria, a nursery school, a language school, an organic garden. There were vouchers for the supermarket.
The Emigrant – every single one – asked Lucano, whether the immigrants are expected to occupy their abandoned houses and renovating them with money of the European Union and the Region of Calabria. All to be said.
And now? In the coming days, the court of Reggio Calabria is to decide whether the proceedings against Mimmo Lucano is definitely, whether or not he can return to life at home, in Riace. Is rehabilitated he ever, of the highest authority.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 03.04.2019, 23:33 PM