“The professor”, “Pol Pot”, “the sheriff”. In short words: Vincenzo De Luca. During the quarantine, the President of the Campania Region became a real social phenomenon. A showman capable, with his invectives, of being successful as far as Japan.
Vincenzo De Luca against Salvini and the M5S
The phrase: “We know someone would like to prepare for the graduation party. We send you the carabinieri, but we send them to you with flamethrowers ” was the programmatic manifesto of Governor De Luca. A phrase that, after the outbreak of Mondragone, had a boomerang effect. Matteo Salvini did not hesitate to tease the governor of Campania: “To De Luca and his clan I leave the jokes about the flamethrower: pity that Mondragone went out”, said the leader of the League who had been called by De Luca a “Donkey” that “has the face like the back” during spat born between the two for the gatherings that took place in the Neapolitan city after the victory of the Italian Cup by Napoli.
The insults that the governor at high altitude Pd addressed to Salvini are innumerable and, on some occasions, they also concerned his love story with his former partner, the presenter Elisa Isoardi or the physical appearance of the leader of the Carroccio. “An exponent who goes around to show the new glasses he bought, baby diaper-colored glasses”, he said in one of his latest Facebook broadcasts. But among the favorite targets of De Luca can not miss the Cinquestelle. In 2016, when the ‘story of Quarto’ came out, De Luca gave a nickname for each of the leaders of the M5S:“Luigino Di Maio the altar boy, Fico il moscio (obviously) and the emerging Di Battista, called Dibba, the capercaillie”. And he concluded: “These three young men have in common that they are three half blowjobs. Di Battista rejected in the municipality, Fico here in the Region and Luigino 56 votes in Pomigliano ”.
How the ‘De Luca phenomenon’ was born
In short, the ‘De Luca phenomenon’ was not born today, but has distant origins. “What we have seen with the quarantine is nothing but the evolution and the landing on social networks of the character De Luca manufactured in the 90s in the mix of direct election of the mayors and tele-preaching in local TVs with a particular attention to order public “, the deputy told ilGiornale.it Gianfranco Rotondi referring to the experience of the current governor of Campania as mayor of Salerno for four terms. De Luca, born in 1949, began doing politics from a young age and in 1975 he became provincial secretary of the PCI first and then the PDS. The workers called him “the professor” since he was a philosophy teacher in high school at the time. In 1990 he became deputy mayor and councilor of the junta of Vincenzo Giordano who, overwhelmed by the investigations, resigned in 1993. From that moment De Luca took the reins of the city for eight years, obtaining re-election in ’97 with 71% of the consents. “We are in pre-social era and, with the direct election of the mayor, the ‘city men’ are born, the mayors who are the very symbol of the city they administer: Gentilini is Treviso, Cito is Taranto, Cucullo is Chieti and De Luca is Salerno “, Rotondi points out. Mayors-sheriff, always ready to report and fight degradation as when De Luca took it out on a writers in love who wrote on the sidewalk of the Lungorno: “Whisk you are my flapping of wings ”. “Such a boy, the sooner you leave him, the better. He’s an idiot “, he said, addressing the writers’ unknown girlfriend from the TV screens of Lira TV, the local broadcaster from where De Luca makes his monologues every Friday afternoon. “De Luca has transferred this model to a regional dimension: it has replaced the mobile phone on television, the social networks on local networks, the Campania Region to the city of Salerno. He only enlarged the zoom, “adds the former minister.
But, before arriving in Naples, De Luca granted two legislatures in Parliament and two more mandates as mayor of Salerno between 2006 and 2015, seen and considered that in 2010 the climb to the Region failed. To defeat him is the force Stefano Caldoro which, then, De Luca will beat five years later. In Campania, the challenge for the conquest of the region between the two of them began just ten years ago and has not yet ended. At the moment both enjoy one win per head and, in September, “la bella” will be celebrated.
In 2013 he was appointed undersecretary to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport of the Letta government and the Antitrust Authority declared that this position is incompatible with the role of mayor. Two years later he was declared fallen twice by two distinct bodies and for two events in just ten days. The first time for incompatibility, while the second because in January 20215 De Luca was sentenced at first instance to one year in prison for abuse of office in the context of an investigation into the Salerno waste-to-energy plant. It was then reinstated by the TAR pending the ruling of the Constitutional Court. That, however, for De Luca, is the year of the Regionals of the ‘revenge’ against Caldoro. A victory stained by the controversy over the “unpresentable”, a list of candidates that, according to the president of the Anti-Mafia Commission Rosy Bindi, it would have been better not to vote because of their judicial problems. The list also included the name of De Luca himself, who in 2008 had been indicted for a charge of bribery, fraud and abuse of office dating back to 1998 and for which the then mayor of Salerno had waived the prescription. “It was an act of infamous responsibility. It is not that you wake up in the morning and 24 hours after the elections the category of unpresentables invents you, for me, Mr Rosaria Bindi is unpresentable, from all points of view “De Luca then commented.
De Luca’s work? Many social and clientelism
The judicial investigations concerning him are numerous and “many have ended up by the wayside”, the deputy reveals Edmondo Cirielli of Brothers of Italy who adds: “In Salerno captain of the oddities with the local prosecutors because someone suddenly finds himself the candidate child with the Democratic Party, another becomes first assessor and, then, MEP”. Cirielli points out: “On a legal level, it means nothing, but from an ethical point of view, one must be amazed at this intertwining between the judiciary and politics”. The political consensus of De Luca, according to the deputy of FdI, “is drugged by the policy of fried fish”. In 2016, in fact, on the occasion of an event on the constitutional referendum, De Luca asked the then mayor of Agropoli Franco Alfieri, known for his patronage, to convince his fellow citizens to go vote for the yes: “Franco, you see how Madonna has to do, offer a fry of fish, take them on boats, on yachts, do as you want, but don’t come here with one vote less than what you promised “.
In this regard, the comment left us by the Northern League Severino Nappi is very hard: “In Salerno – the regional councilor tells us – a De Luca system was born, a management of patronage and family politics, which was transferred to the Region”. According to the Northern League representative “De Luca is a very bad administrator. The growth of Salerno was only a waste of public money for works that, at times, also disfigured the city, while in the Region he will be remembered for the lowest expenditure of European funds in the history of Campania “. Both Cirielli and Nappi agree in maintaining that De Luca is an “all chatter and distinctive” man. During the lockdown, De Luca was good at riding the fear of the coronavirus but “the concrete facts, however, demonstrate the inefficiency of the Campania Region and there are investigations by the Naples prosecutor both for swabs and for the management of the funds”, says Cirielli who complains about the delays in starting the organizational machine of resuscitations in Campania. “Fanpage he denounced that the company that built the Covid hospital on the Lombard model started to work before the race took place “, echoes Nappi who then presses on:” De Luca, thanks to the cabaret of fear, showed himself as savior of the lives but Campania has been the Region that has had more contagions and less tampons “.
“Even the much vaunted ability to control the territory was a bluff,” explains Cirielli referring to the Mondragone case. “There was an outbreak there and, as it was the Roma so dear to the left, people who quietly went out during the lockdown, and the governor downplayed until, now, he was forced to call the army,” attacks Cirielli. Ultimately, if De Luca were to win it would only be thanks to his videos that went viral thanks to a massive investment on social media (53 thousand euros invested according to the Republic). “De Luca is not a person accustomed to the contradictory, his is always an informative monologue topped with picturesque tones and cabaret. When he is unable to respond to his inefficiencies, he offends the other on a personal level, “says Cirielli.
–
