Telosaes.it

"The Mayor, by definition, is down in the trenches and is a local bulwark of the State."

Telos: Every time someone talks about the direct election of the Prime Minister, people use the very evocative expression “Mayor of Italy”.
So, is it true that Mayors have, in the administration of their own city, more power than the Prime Minister has today?

Cateno De Luca: The first element, which for me is essential, is citizens’ perception of the Mayor as opposed to the Prime Minister. This is important because the Mayor, by definition, is down in the trenches and is a local bulwark of the State, regardless of the size of the municipality they govern. So, the Mayor is perceived to be closer, more direct, and this probably also lends legitimacy to the Mayor having more direct powers and acting directly.
There is another element as well, which obviously regards the Constitution; I think there is no question that, right now, Mayors are more entitled to “issue orders” than the Prime Minister because they are directly elected by the people. I believe the Mayor, paradoxically, is more entitled than the Prime Minister because here there isn’t that circular element: direct election and the automatic expression of authority. As a result, I know that it has been tried, and may happen again in the future, to create a strong figure that today effectively embodies this idea of the “Mayor of Italy”. A figure invested with power directly by the people, who then becomes untouchable in the games played within the Halls of Powers. As in the case of the Mayor: when there is no longer confidence in the Mayor, new elections are held, rather than just appointing a new Mayor. Therefore, I agree the Constitution should be changed in order for the Prime Minister to be directly elected.

The breakdown in the party system has very likely been the source of people’s widespread anti-political sentiment. And yet this gap between citizens and politics is not nearly as wide when it comes to the Mayor. Are your citizens still passionate about politics?

I would move this to a different level, which begins with my own experience: I was and am still anti-politics. But first we have to define what anti-politics actually means. Today, I think people are tired of the Halls of Powers, or of situations with dynamics that have nothing to do with everyday dynamics.
The real problem is this detachment. It isn’t a question of politics, or of whoever happens to embody politics at that moment. It’s a question of the Halls of Powers.
My favourite saying is: “either immediately change the Halls of Powers, or the Halls of Power will change you.” And as an administrator, I have always operated on the basis of this principle.
I dedicate the first two years of my term to making deep changes in the Halls of Powers, to avoid not being able to change anything.
This is a real risk for all administrators when they get into city government – or for any government figure for that matter – when they set foot inside the Halls of Powers, which are like a cocoon where you are expected to adapt to a way of doing things that is almost taken for granted, inescapable.
The Halls of Powers need to be broken down concretely, they need to be dissected and restructured. When we go in, the key words in my administration are: broad restructuring of the structure and economic and financial recovery, issues that are definitely common to any place of government. We have always done this, and if that particular Hall of Power responds to the people’s needs, the people respect it. I have always been elected by the people, not by politics, or rather the parties. However, at the same time, I am politics, because I make my political proposals real. This is why we need to define what it means to be anti-politics. I must admit that people see me as being anti-politics, or rather anti-political parties, the guy who changes, rather than adapts to the Halls of Power.
This is my experience, and I have also paid dearly for the consequences. But this is what the people have figured out, and this is why I am governing my third city Hall of power.

You have served as the Mayor of Messina for a little more than two years. However, your experience in politics has been rather intense: not only are you the only deputy on the Sicilian Regional Assembly to serve for three terms, you are the only Italian citizen that has served as Mayor in three different municipalities. Could you tell us, using examples from your own experience, the similarities and differences in the stories of how you became Mayor of these three municipalities?

I’ll tell you an anecdote someone reminded me about last night during a reunion with the other “banditi” (in Italian the word bandito means outlaw, however by assonance it can be used, as a joke, to refer to musical band members)- as us old members of the Fiumedinisi “metropolis” band like to call ourselves. That is where I was elected Mayor for the first time.
The traditional dish of Fiumedinisi, typical of its culinary culture, is roast goat. Unfortunately, I hate goat, I hate sheep. I can’t even stand the smell. I can’t even be in a place where they’re cooking it, even though it’s an important part of our local culture. Well, I broke this “spell”, this conviction of an old, multi-term Mayor. A very closed mountain environment proved to be open to electing me in May 2003. I was just 31 years old and the people of Fiumedinisi knew there was something different about my political proposal, and they didn’t allow themselves to be swayed by anything else. I started at 18 years old as city councillor right in that Municipality: I paid my dues, put up posters, served on the city council, the executive council, head of the opposition and finally Mayor. At 14 I was a member of Christian Democracy (DC) and head billposter for the DC section in Fiumedinisi. I don’t hide my past, I put it out there for everyone to see, because that’s where I got my start and it indeed schooled me in politics. But I tried to put the things I learned then to good use. After shattering the myth of goat meat, I resigned as Mayor of Fiumedinisi on 1 July 2001 because of my first arrest on 27 June 2011 at 9:45 p.m. I resigned and a year later ran for Mayor of Santa Teresa di Riva, a little town I was totally new to. I chose it because it was the most important Municipality holding elections and as a test to decide whether or not to go on with my career in politics. I told myself: “I’ll see how I do in Santa Teresa di Riva, because if things go well there, then there are chances for growth.” The results in there were outstanding: I was elected Mayor in May 2012 against everyone, beating the outgoing Mayor and two other candidates, both former mayors. However, the absurd thing is that my little, independent list got 6-7%, while I, the guy running for Mayor, got 37% and won in one round. My term in Santa Teresa ended in June 2017.
I started getting ready to run in the Regional elections on 5 November 2017, but in April I had already launched the idea of running for Mayor of Messina. I said I was going to use the regional elections as a sort of break to survey how much people liked me and that I was going to assess my results in Messina in order to make my final decision on possibly running for Mayor. I was elected to the Sicilian Regional Assembly for the third time on 5 November 2017 with very encouraging results. Then I ran for Mayor of Messina and got elected. This is my relationship with the electorate: I’ve never had anything to hide, I don’t have any skeletons in the closet, no one will ever be able to blackmail me nor will I ever be able to be influenced by any environment.

Your being elected Mayor of Messina is very interesting from a political standpoint. In fact, you ran as the head of a coalition of six centrist civic lists and were elected in a run-off election on 24 June with 65.28% of the votes, beating the centre-right candidate. Yet no one on any of these lists even got one seat. How do you explain that?

I became Mayor of Messina in a situation that has never happened before: a Mayor elected without a list reaching over the 5% needed to get a city councillor.
I made up six lists because I had to prove I had an army, at least on paper: to flex the muscles that, at that time, I didn’t actually have. This was important because I was up against coalitions that had 7-8 lists. I admit, I hoped at least one, the one I was running with, would reach 5% in order to get 17 councillors out of 32. That list got 4.5%.
A lot of people accused me of diluting the vote with too many lists. But remember, I got through the first round with only 1300 votes compared to the other candidate.
If I’d had five lists instead of six, I don’t know if I would’ve managed to get through the first round. We’ll never know why, but that’s the way things had to go and that’s how I’m governing now. These are the tangible effects: after resigning as regional deputy, I took on the responsibility of going ahead even without a majority in the Council. Therefore, I’m governing with a two-fold risk: the normal risk of not being able to get things done – which can happen to any mayor – and the aggravating factor of not having the majority in the City Council.
You have to take every opportunity you can to create a majority in the City Council and there are various ways of doing this. I’m for using strong methods that start from the assumption that the things that need to be done need to be done period, regardless of the political parties. When dealing with financial recovery and reorganising the Halls of Powers, or rather, with issues that benefit both the Halls of Powers and the community, there shouldn’t be political divisions.
I made a road map for Messina with a change of pace, with a package of proposals that has allowed us to emerge from the financial abyss and be here, today, as a city that has started to play a leading role again. We are the first in terms of European Community Funds spending and are one of the few cities with balanced financial statements. All of this despite not having a majority. How did we achieve this? The majority of the time it was through public “slaps in the face”, conflict and threats of resignation – which were sometimes actually presented – to convince the City Council that political warfare is real, whereas the right thing to do is another story. So far this power struggle has been rather draining, but it has helped us achieve results that are essential to the city. The city understands and has expressed its broad approval of me, as you can see from the statistics and polls commissioned by the ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities) and the Italian news daily Il Sole 24Ore.
If today the Mayor of Messina is the second most popular Mayor in Italy, there surely must be a reason.
What I have been trying to do is govern according to the common interests of the people and these results are proof: we’ve submitted our second report on our activities, a tome that is 1500 pages long, within the required deadline.
They are important results, achieved even without a city council majority. But I admit, for Mayors with a secure majority, it’s a whole lot easier…

Marco Sonsini