It Takes More Than Mafia Threats and Populists to Scare Sicily
The contest for Sicily is also a test to take down populism in one of its heartlands.
(Bloomberg) -- Nello Musumeci checks off the main points of his platform for the governorship of Sicily as his driver navigates the lunchtime traffic of the ancient city of Syracuse.
Musumeci, 62, has received mafia threats but refused the bullet-proof sedan and armed guard that is his right. Instead, he sits in the front passenger seat of his rental car -- a white Nissan -- dressed in a pin-stripe suit and navy tie, and outlines his plans to boost job-creation with more vocational training for the young and help for start-ups.
Musumeci’s role as junior labor minister under former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and as head of the nearby province of Catania has seen him tackle the economic woes that blight this part of Italy. But the additional factor that might propel him over the line to victory this time lies in the nature of the coalition he’s leading into regional elections on Nov. 5.
“We’ve got a united center-right in Sicily after almost a decade of infighting,” he said, his driver trying to make up time between a news briefing at a local hotel and a Syracuse radio studio. According to Musumeci, that achievement will help Berlusconi’s bid to form similar party alliances across Italy ahead of national elections due next spring. The upshot, he says, is that Sicily will be “a laboratory for Italian politics.”
Five Star
With 4.6 million voters, the contest for Sicily’s governor and assembly is a barometer of party fortunes before the national elections. But it’s also a test of the ability of a coalition of forces -- as encouraged under a new electoral law now going through parliament -- to take on and defeat the populist Five Star Movement in one of its heartlands.
Five Star already rules eight towns across Sicily, and is seeking to build on that support to capture its first Italian region. Its strategy is to channel voter anger against Sicily’s establishment, its economic challenges, and the influx of migrants from across the Mediterranean.
Twenty kilometers to the north of Syracuse, across a bay that was once home to ancient Greek colonies, the Five Star mayor of Augusta, Cettina Di Pietro, is on the frontline of that effort: Rescued migrants are escorted chiefly to Augusta’s port.
“Rome is forcing us to accept an identification center at the port. But this is a commercial port and a military base,” she says in her office, the door flanked by two ancient amphoras. The industrial port, one of Italy’s biggest, spans petroleum, petrochemical and cement production, handling more than 31 million tons of liquid bulk cargo a year.
Mayor Di Pietro was elected with 75 percent of the vote in 2015, but she’s finding that power has a political cost. The former criminal lawyer wants to create jobs but her decision to have city hall declared insolvent, with a deficit of 102 million euros ($120 million), has frozen public works contracts. “That may be unpopular with many people, but we do things previous administrations refused to do,” says Di Pietro, who cut her mayor’s pay by 30 percent.
Musumeci’s Five Star rival for the governorship of Sicily, Giancarlo Cancelleri, has unveiled 10 measures to boost jobs which also include more help for start-ups and better use of EU funds. Cancelleri, 42, an ex-surveyor, wants to create a Brussels-based “citizens’ lobbyist” who would represent Sicilian firms, and a “hunter of buyers” to sell their goods abroad. He also wants a basic universal income for the poor and the jobless.
Polls suggest it may not be enough for voters. Five Star is trailing the center-right coalition sponsored by Berlusconi and parties including the anti-migrant Northern League, which in Sicily calls itself “We With Salvini” after its leader, Matteo Salvini. Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni’s Democratic Party ranks a distant third in Sicily; nationally, it is virtually tied with the other two blocs.
Dockside View
Down at the docks, Marina Noe, 52, whose family has run the shipyard Cantiere Navale di Augusta since 1890, says she’ll probably vote for the center-right.
“I want to create growth,” says Noe, general manager of the shipyard she has worked in since the age of 18. Noe has seen turnover fall by 40 percent to some 5 million euros a year since the financial crisis of 2008, with competition from cheaper Turkish, Croat and Maltese rivals. “How can we compete when we have to pay more than 40 percent in welfare and other charges on top of each worker’s wage?” she says.
Below the mayor’s office on the piazza dominated by the town’s main church, built on the ruins of the previous one which collapsed in an earlier earthquake of 1653, opinion is mixed on who can best deliver employment.
Agatha Mignego, 46, who survives on odd jobs looking after the elderly, appreciates the mayor’s gesture in cutting her own wage, and says she’ll vote for Five Star. Alessandro Spinali, 37, who stopped getting part-time work as a builder in local oil refineries last year, says billionaire Berlusconi “is the only one who knows about creating jobs.”
Politics student Roberta Ferrara, 26, says she wants change, but won’t be waiting around to see it: she’s due to finish her studies next year, and is already planning to leave. “I’ll move north, to Milan,” she said. “There are jobs there.”
To contact the reporters on this story: John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net, Giovanni Salzano in Rome at gsalzano@bloomberg.net, Hayley Warren in London at hwarren21@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo