Mayor of Naples, Luigi De Magistris (L), shakes hands with US Vice President Joe Biden during the visit to Capodichino U.S. Navy Base in Naples, Italy, on 04 June 2011. On Right President of Campania Region, Stefano Caldoro. (Photo SkyTg24)

The newly elected mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris, has invited President Barack Obama to visit Naples.  The Mayor, who is a staunch supporter of the American president, is hopeful that a visit by Obama could be used as a milestone for the rebirth of the city, which has been plagued by waste disposal problems, violent and petty crime against citizens and tourists, and collusion between organized crime and politicians.
During the visit by American Vice President, Joe Biden, to the US Naval Support Activity in Naples, Mayor de Magistris formalized his invitation to President Obama.  The Mayor stated that “I will work very hard for this event to take place – it is not an improvised matter, but something in which I firmly believe.  I believe that there are all the conditions for the visit to take place, but the timing needs to be verified.  I am an Obama supporter and I know that the States are very careful regarding the movement that has been created around my person.  There are analogies with what happened with Obama”.

The Neapolitan daily “Il Mattino” reported on 5 June 2011, that there will be a meeting next week between the Mayor and the American Consul General, Donald Moore.  According to the paper, the Consul stated that “we need to re-launch tourism, discuss the relationship between Naples and the United States, the relationship with the Neapolitan citizens who live in the United States, and the necessary commitment regarding security in light of what has happened very recently”.  The Consul was obviously referring to the violent death of an American tourist who died as a consequence of injuries received when robbers stole his Rolex watch downtown.

The President of the Campania Region, Stefano Caldoro, also supports the idea of inviting President Obama. “Il Mattino” reports that discussions have already taken place with the Italian President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, and with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  The objective would appear to be to create and international event or an Italy-USA bilateral meeting in Naples which would allow the city to benefit from major influx of public funds which could serve to bring it up to speed. Commentators are looking at the positive effect that the G7 had on the city in 1994, when President Bill Clinton and other international leaders were hosted by the city.  At that time, during Antonio Bassolino’s first term in office as mayor, the city underwent major refurbishing and restyling, leading many to label the period as a new Neapolitan renaissance.

While discussions proceed on getting Obama to visit the city, Luigi de Magistris is working on nominating his new city government.  His objective is to announce the names of the twelve department heads on 13 June 2011 .  Observers believe that the new government will include many technicians, a high number of women, relatively young persons, and it will be non-ideological. De Magistris will be relatively free from the influence of major political parties because he won defeating the candidates put forward by Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right and Pier Luigi Bersani’s center-left.   His most daunting task is to rid the city of tons of garbage before the high heat of the summer leads the disposal problem to become a major sanitary issue.

More photos from SkyTg24 of Vice President Joe Biden with US troops and with the Mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris

More photos from “La Repubblica” of Vice President Joe Biden with US troops and with the Mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris

Official campaign poster: Luigi de Magistris Mayor "for" Naples

New mayor wins with 65% of vote

A former magistrate, Luigi de Magistris, is the new mayor of Naples. He has been elected today during a runoff between the two candidates who received the highest number of votes during the first round held two weeks ago. He defeated Gianni Lettieri, an entrepreneur representing a center right coalition supported by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The new mayor is a member of the European Parliament where he is the Chair of the Budgetary Control Committee. He was elected in 2009 representing the Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values) party, which is affiliated with the Alliance of Democrats and Liberals for Europe formation in the European Parliament.

De Magistris is a 43 old native of Naples. He is married to the former Maria Teresa Dolce and has two sons. He became a public prosecutor in 1995, with assignments in Naples from 1998 to 2002, and as deputy public prosecutor in Catanzaro, Italy, from 2002 to 2009. He entered the European Parliament as the second most voted Italian politician after Silvio Berlusconi. During the course of his career as public prosecutor, his investigations have frequently run into political roadblocks leading to his transfer and attempt to subject him to internal disciplinary measures. One of his investigations caused serious controversy leading to the resignation of Clemente Mastella, the Italian Minister of Justice, in 2008, causing the fall of the center-left government led by Romano Prodi.

Luigi de Magistris decided to run for the seat of mayor of Naples after that the center left primaries were cancelled last January due to alleged irregularities on the part of supporters of the very influential politician Antonio Bassolino, an ex-communist former mayor of Naples and former governor of the Campania Region. De Magistris announced his candidacy for mayor in February and he was supported by a coalition of three parties, his own Italia dei Valori, the Federation of the Left, and the relatively new Partito del Sud (Party of the South). A citizens’ list also, “Napoli è tua” (Naples is yours) supported him.

During the two-round runoff competition, Luigi de Magistris obtained approximately 28 percent of the vote, second to Gianni Lettieri with approximately 38 percent. The candidate of the center left, Mario Morcone scored slightly below 20 percent and the candidate for the center, Professor Raimondo Paquino scored approximately 9 percent. During the negotiations between the different coalitions, De Magistris refused an official agreement with the center-left, but appealed to their electorate. He also courted in public Paquino, obtaining his informal support. In the end, he was able to muster enough support to win with a striking 65 percent against 35 for his opponent, Lettieri.

De Magistris ran on a law and order platform, combined with proposals for re-launching Naples as a major European capital, ridding it of garbage and creating the premises for major investments. His electorate includes citizens of the whole political spectrum ranging from the far left to conservatives concerned with ramping insecurity and disorder. De Magistris will be able to count on a very solid majority in City Hall where at least 32 council members out of 48 will support his program, and another 4 will be neutral. The center right opposition will be able to count on only 12 votes.

Now de Magistris will need to immediately deliver on his promise to rid the city of garbage and to implement modern waste collection and disposal systems in line with the high environmental standards that he and his coalition have advocated during the election campaign.

The primaries held by the center-left coalition on 23 January 2011 to select the candidate for the election to mayor for the city of Naples, which will take place in the spring (the date has not yet been set), has degraded into a scandal-ridden event.  Andrea Cozzolino captured 37.3% of the vote, followed by Umberto Ranieri with 34.6%, by Libero Mancuso with 15.8%, and by Nicola Oddati with 12.1%.  Only 1,200 votes separate the winner from the second-up. Close to 45 thousand people participated in the primaries.

Cozzolino’s success is tainted by accusations made by other candidates that he, or his supporters, acted improperly with respect to voting that took place  in two districts, Secondigliano and Miano.  Cozzolino lost in eight of the ten Neapolitan districts, but he won by an overwhelming margin in only two districts, allowing him to distance Ranieri by 1,200 votes.  Cozzolino is supported by the former mayor of Naples and two-times President of the Campania Region, Antonio Bassolino.  Ranieri is supported by the Italian President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano.  The third candidate, Libero Mancuso, is a former magistrate, supported by the left of the coalition.  Nicola Oddati, who is the only candidate not born in Naples (he is from Salerno) is a member of the current city government headed by Rosa Russo Iervolino, where he is the assessor responsible for culture.

The accusations against Cozzolino range from having received illegitimate support from Fulvio Martusciello, a member of the center-right coalition at the Regional Council, to having “bought” votes with the help of organized crime.  The national direction of the Democratic Party has taken over the Neapolitan section of the party placing it on 27 January 2011 in the hands of a commissioner, Andrea Orlando, nominated directly by Pier Luigi Bersani, in the place of Nicola Tremante.  The new commissioner, who is a member of Parliament and is responsible for the party’s national commission on justice and legality, annulled the primaries and started an internal investigation regarding the allegations made by several candidates and observers.

In Italy, the system of primaries, which have been adopted during the past three election cycles only by the center-left coalition, is still in an embryonic stage.  There is no formal method for identifying who is authorized to vote in the primaries.  The center left party organizations set up the voting methodology, and rely on volunteers to identify voters, who may  include also non-residents and those who normally vote for the center-right.  Since the center-right coalition does not hold primaries, their voters are free to “influence” the primaries in the center-left coalition, because they are not forced to choose to vote in one primary versus another.

Commentators in the local press note that the evident failure of the center-left coalition that has been ruling Naples under the leadership of mayor Rosa Russo Iervolino since 2001, and the administrative failure of Bassolino’s governance of the Campania Region before Stefano Caldoro’s center-right coalition took over last March, added to latest scandal involving the primaries, make it imperative that the center-left find a candidate capable of uniting the coalition and who is completely removed from Bassolino and the “old gang”.

A child walks through uncollected garbage on his way back from school in the historic Spanish district of Naples on November 22, 2010 AFP Photo / Roberto Salomone

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi promised on 27 November 2010 that in two weeks’ time Naples will be garbage free.  It’s the second time in the last two months that he has promised to remove garbage from the streets of Naples.  Regrettably, he did not keep the one he made on 22 October 2010, and now the streets of Naples have accumulated 2,700 metric tons of uncollected garbage (i.e., about 6 million pounds).

Most people had reason to believe Berlusconi in October, because in 2008, after winning the national elections, he got the garbage off the streets, as promised during the election campaign.  On 21 May 2008, Berlusconi held his first cabinet meeting in Naples and ten months later, on 26 March 2009, he returned to inaugurate the new incinerator in Acerra, where most of the garbage produced by the former capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was to be treated.  During the inauguration ceremony in Acerra, Berlusconi declared that the garbage emergency in Naples was over.  Unfortunately, the Acerra plant, which is composed of three independent processing units, has never worked at full capacity.

Berlusconi’s new promise to rid the city of the garbage sitting on the streets appears to be a “mission impossible” to many observers due to a combination of technical and political issues.

On the technical side, the garbage sitting on the streets can be picked up in a couple of days, but the problem is where to put it.  The Acerra incinerator is not working at full capacity, existing landfills are almost full, the digging of new landfills are at a standstill due to “not-in-my-backyard” protests by people living in the affected communities, and very few Regional governments have expressed their willingness to process any garbage from Campania.  The Italian Army is sending 400 troops with equipment to assist in picking up the garbage and in securing designated storage depots and landfills.  Several cities have sent compactor garbage trucks to assist in picking up and processing the garbage.  The towns of Avellino and Caserta have agreed to take approximately 250 tons of garbage per day from Naples in exchange of being allowed to use the Acerra incinerator.

On the political side, Berlusconi is facing three main political problems in solving the garbage crisis.

The first is that he is having difficulty in convincing center-right governors of the northern Regions to assist Naples in processing the garbage.  The most firm governors who are refusing to lend a helping hand are Luca Zaia, heading Veneto, and Roberto Cota, heading Piemonte.  Both are members of the Northern League party, which is part of the coalition supporting Berlusconi’s national government.

The second problem is with the center-right coalition governing the Campania Region, headed by Governor Stefano Caldoro.  The coalition is suffering from political divisions caused by the recent national and local rifts in Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party.  During the summer, the party split at the national level when Gianfranco Fini formed a new center-right party called Future and Liberty.  Fini, who is the current president of the House and a cofounder, together with Berlusconi, of the People of Freedom party, is publicly critical of Berlusconi’s ethics and conflicts of interest.  A second rift took place two weeks ago when Mara Carfagna, the equal opportunity minister from Salerno, announced that she would leave the Berlusconi government over issues relating to ethics, especially in Campania.

The third problem pertains to the leadership of Berlusconi’s party in Campania.  Two public prosecutors from the Court of Naples, Alessandro Milita and Giuseppe Narducci, have announced today that they have come to the conclusion that Nicola Consentino, the head of the People of Freedom party in Campania, has connections with the organized crime, the Camorra.  Cosentino has been accused of boycotting the legitimate waste disposal process, attempting to favor the Camorra, which controls several illegal waste disposal landfills.  Consentino, who is a member of parliament, will be standing trial if the House grants authorization.

Anthony M. Quattrone

Stefano Caldoro, the governor of the Campania Region, is trying to head off a new garbage crisis in his region.  He is not getting much support from political allies in Northern Italy.  Caldoro heads a center-right coalition that was elected last March, following almost ten years of rule by former Communist Antonio Bassolino, whose regional government has been faulted for mismanaging the waste disposal system that brought images of Naples submerged with garbage on the front pages of newspapers world wide in 2008.

The governors of Piedmont, Roberto Cota, and Veneto, Luca Zaia, who are members of the Northern League party, belonging to Silvio Berlusconi’s coalition which heads the national government in Rome, have gone public in denying Caldoro any assistance finding a location to process thousands of tons of waste produced by Campania.

Zaia stated on 12 October 2010 that “on the waste management front, Campania needs to take care of itself , and it is a scandal that the army has had to intervene. I defend the people of Venetia and everyone must keep their garbage in their own home.”  Zaia stated that he was by Caldoro’s side, and that he “has my solidarity, because it is shameful to see urban guerilla scenes.  He is a friend and we are helping him also on the public health front, sending him top consultants from Veneto”.

Caldoro replied to Zaia’s “friendly fire” statement reiterating that the Northern League is “high and mighty”, behaving as an arrogant professor.  Caldoro’s position appears to be in line with the feeling which is beginning to gain ground in Naples against preposterous arguments put forward by northern Italian politicians against the South.

Caldoro has taken a firm stand affirming that he will counter all gratuitous criticism arriving from the North.  “I will reply” Caldoro stated, “at every arrogant attempt and attack against the South.  If this arrogance will continue to arrive from the Northern League, then we will reply, tit for tat.  We will fight and, in the end, logic will prevail.  There are too many prejudices up North and too many acquired positions that they wish to defend, but we will win the challenge.”

The emerging conflict between Caldoro, Cota, and Zaia is a new element of concern for Silvio Berlusconi’s conflict-ridden center-right coalition.  During the past three months, Berlusconi has had to deal with a schism in his Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom) party which has led to the ouster of the party’s cofounder, Gianfranco Fini, and over thirty members of Parliament.  Fini is the current president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies.

Stefano Caldoro with Premier Silvio Berlusconi on 18 March 2010 during the campaign for governor of the Campania Region (photo from Caldoro's campaign site at http://www.caldoropresidente.it/foto/)

Stefano Caldoro, the candidate for the center-right coalition for governor of the Campania Region, has won the elections held on 28 and 29 March 2010, and the parties in his coalition have also conquered the majority of seats in the Regional Council. Caldoro took 54.25% of the vote, against Vicenzo de Luca, the candidate for the center-left coalition, who earned 43.04%, Paolo Ferrero, with 1.35%, who ran for the “federation of the left”, and Roberto Fico with 1.34%, representing another leftist formation, the “five stars movement”. Caldoro will be replacing Antonio Bassolino, the outgoing center-left governor, who held the post for the past ten years.

Only 62.96% of the approximately 5 million eligible voters cast their ballots during the elections in Campania.

The results in Campania follow the general trend in the elections held in ten other Italian regions. The results allow Premier Silvio Berlusconi to claim victory for his center-right government because his coalition has increased the regional governments that it administers from two to six, leaving four to the center left. The center-right won in Campania, Lazio, Piedmont, and Calabria, and it held on to Lombardy and Veneto. The center-left was able to hold on only to five regions: Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Liguria, Umbria, and Basilicata.

In Campania, Stefano Caldoro’s victory was cheered by those who are seeking a total break with the style of the outgoing governor, Antonio Bassolino, whose administration was marred by the accusation of cronyism, favoritism, and overall inefficiency. During the Bassolino years, the region has been at the center of international attention due to the garbage crisis. Stefano Caldoro is particularly concerned that Bassolino is continuing to make political appointments to regionally managed firms while he is on his way out, without coordinating such appointments with the incoming government.

Political scientists are analyzing the results of the elections in Campania to understand the effect of the decision of 37.04% of the eligible voters to not show up at the polls. Caldoro and the center-right won with a majority of those who showed up to vote, and there is no doubt that he and his coalition are the winners. However, when results are compared to the total eligible voters, an interesting scenario appears.

1. The “party” of non voters is at 37.04%.
2. The “party” of those who left the ballot empty or annulled it is at 3.84%.
The total of these first two groups sums to an alarming 40.87% of the eligible voters.

3. Caldoro and the center-right coalition obtained 32.08% of the eligible vote.
4. De Luca and the center-left coalition obtained 25.45% of the eligible vote.
5. Ferrero and Fico, and their smaller leftist coalitions obtained 1.60% of the eligible vote.

One of the messages coming from the citizens of the Campania Region is that Caldoro’s majority and De Luca’s minority in the Regional Council will need to work hard on regaining the trust of the electorate towards the whole political world in Campania. The ten years of the Bassolino government and the inept and often complicit opposition lead by the center-right have damaged the trust and confidence of the voters towards local politicians. The “trasformismo” (a political term used in Italy at the turn of the XIX century to describe turncoat politicians) of major leaders of the political center in Campania, such as Ciriaco De Mita and Clemente Mastella, who supported Bassolino and the center-left until 2008, and the complete face about of major personalities in the health care services, who abandoned the center-left in the last ten days of the electoral competition, after receiving major political favors from Bassolino, have dealt a final blow to the trust and confidence of voters in the political process.

Caldoro is now at work to set up the new Regional government. He has announced that he will concentrate on nominating top quality technicians and specialists to hold posts his government. His job will be particularly difficult in fending off the turncoats who brought him the necessary votes to win, especially those in the health care field. If he is able to put together a decent Regional government he might be able to increase the level of trust and confidence in the political process on the part of the citizens of the Campania region. This, on its own merit, would be a major accomplishment on the part of Stefano Caldoro.

Antonio Bassolino, outgoing president of the Campania Region (photo from the official Campania Region website)

Anthony M. Quattrone

On 28 and 29 March 2010, approximately 5 million citizens of the Campania Region will be eligible to vote to select the new president of the region and to renew the Regional Council.  Campania is the second most-populous region of Italy with a population of around 5.7 million. It is also the most densely populated region in the country.

The outgoing president of the region is Antonio Bassolino, a former member of the Italian Communist Party and one of the founding fathers of the Democratic Party.  Bassolino was a very successful mayor of Naples, serving two terms from 1994 to 1998.  His successful first term was rewarded at the polls in 1997, when he won 72.9% of the vote.  In 1998, he resigned his post as mayor to become minister of labor and social security in the government of Massimo D’Alema.  After the assassination of his close advisor, Massimo D’Antona, in 1999, by the leftist terrorists, Bassolino resigned his post as minister and returned to Naples to compete for the post of President of the Campania Region.  He was elected to the post in 2000, with 54.3% of the vote.  He was re-elected in 2005 with 61.6% of the vote.  Bassolino’s last term in office has been marred by numerous scandals involving the role of consultants and by the inability of the Region to manage the garbage crises that hit Naples and the whole of the Campania Region several times during his second term as president.

A center left coalition also holds the majority of the seats in the outgoing regional council, which is composed of 60 members.  The outgoing president of the Regional Council, Sandra Lonardo, is in a very interesting, albeit, contradictory position.  She is the wife of the former center-left minister of Justice, Clemente Mastella, who resigned his post in the government led by Romano Prodi on 16 January 2008, after that his wife was placed under house arrest as a consequence of her indictment for corruption.  Mastella’s resignation, and the subsequent withdrawal of his party, the UDEUR, from the center-left coalition, caused the fall of the Prodi government, and the decision by the President of the Republic to call for new national elections, which brought the center right coalition, led by Silvio Berlusconi, back to power.  Today, Clemente Mastella is a member of the European Parliament, representing Berlusconi’s Pdl Parly, while his wife, Sandra Lonardo, is still a member of the center left formation in the outgoing Regional Council, but she is running with Berlusconi’s center right coalition, supporting Stefano Caldoro for president of the Region.  The UDEUR, led by Mastella and Lonardo, is quite popular in Benevento and the surrounding areas, and might very well determine the outcome of the elections in Campania.

The two main candidates for the position of President of the Campania region are Stefano Caldoro for the center right coalition led by Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (Pdl) party, and Vincenzo De Luca for the center left coalition, led by two major parties, the Democratic Party (Pd) and the Italia dei Valori (Idv – Italy of Values).  According to a poll conducted by SWG on behalf of the Corriere del Mezzogiorno, the race is too close to call for the position of President, but the center right parties are in the lead of over 12 points for obtaining the majority of seats in the Council.  The election rules allow citizens to vote separately for the Council and for the president.

The center left candidate, De Luca, who is the current mayor of the city of Salerno, is also well liked by centrist and conservative voters for the very tough stand on crime and illegal immigration that he has taken in the city of Salerno.  For this reason, De Luca is often referred to as the “sheriff”.  De Luca is also credited by voters from the left and the right for having taken a very critical stand of his party colleague, Antonio Bassolino, opposing the former’s candidate for the election to mayor of Salerno in 2006. De Luca beat the official candidates of the center right and center left coalitions by running as an independent.

The center right candidate, Stefano Caldoro, a former member of the Italian Socialist Pary, has held the post of under secretary, vice minister, and minister in two Berlusconi governments over the past decade, but he has no specific administrative experience either at the city or regional level. He is currently a member of parliament, where he has been elected to the House in 2008 with the Pdl party.

A Chamber of Deputies commission, responsible for examining requests by the judiciary to arrest a representative, voted on 25 November 2009 against authorizing the detention of Nicola Cosentino, with 11 votes against the arrest, six in favor, and who abstained. The final decision regarding Cosentino will be made, however, on 10 December 2009, when the House will be called, during a full session, to vote on the request made by the Office of the Public Prosecutor to arrest him for external participation in the activities of the Camorra, the Neapolitan organized crime. On the same day, the Senate voted against two motions put forward by the opposition requesting that Cosentino, be removed from his position as undersecretary of the ministry of the economy in the Berlusconi government. Both motions were rejected by the ample majority supporting the Berlusconi government in the Senate.

While the Cosentino case continues through the parliamentary process, Gioandomenico Lepore, the Naples public prosecutor, confirmed that the case inquiry against Cosentino will continue. Lepore stated that the judiciary and Parliament have different roles, and that “we have understood this issue in one way, while they have understood it in another. This does not impede us from continuing ascertaining the facts. If we find elements supporting our case, then we will continue; if not, we will stop. In the meantime, the investigation continues”.

Cosentino, who is the regional coordinator for Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PdL) party, is continuing his campaign to become the next president of the Campania Region in the elections that will take place next March. In an interview published on the Naples edition of La Repubblica on 6 December 2009, Cosentino stated that he will never give up and will not allow the opposition to win. He stated that “I am, we are in the electoral campaign. The voters have understood that in this Region we are the only valid alternative to the last fifteen years of bad government,” referring in particular to the administration of Antonio Bassolino, who has been the “governor” of the Campania Region since 2000. Cosentino is convinced that the accusations against him are politically driven. He notes that if the magistrates have been investigating him since 1990, for external relationships with the organized crime family Casalesi, he wonders why they have come out only now with formal accusations. According to Cosentino, “the only reason behind the request to arrest me is to stop me from participating in the campaign” for president of the Region.

Garbage in Pozzuoli, January 2008. Photo by Anthony M. Quattrone.

The connection between Neapolitan organized crime, known as “camorra” and politicians in Naples and other cities in the Campania Region has been at the center of the political debate over the past years.  The debate has become more passionate following the request made by a public prosecutor to arrest politician Nicola Cosentino.  Earlier this week, the Office of the Public Prosecutor sent to the Chamber of Deputies a request to arrest Cosentino, who is an undersecretary of the ministry of the economy of the Berlusconi government and a Member of Parliament.  Cosentino cannot be arrested without the consent of the Chamber of Deputies.  He is accused of providing outside support to the illegal activities of the camorra in relation to the collection, transportation, and disposal of garbage in the Campania Region.  The camorra-politicians-garbage disposal paradigm has come to the attention of magistrates over the course of the past fifteen years, but no major politician has ever been arrested.

The garbage disposal crisis and its link to organized crime has been officially recognized by the Italian state for the past fifteen years.  On 11 February 1994, the Italian government, headed by Arzeglio Ciampi, declared a state of emergency in Naples and nominated a commissioner with special powers to deal with the disposal of garbage.  Since then, eleven commissioners have been nominated by different national and regional governments, which, in the meantime, have alternated between center left and center right majorities.  The head of the civil protection, two prefects, and two presidents of the Campania region, one from the center right, Antonio Rastrelli, and one from the center left, Antonio Bassolino, took turns as commissioners.  In the end, by the spring of 2008, the Naples garbage crisis hit the international media, placing Naples on the front pages of virtually every major newspaper in the world.  The images of Naples covered with tons of garbage eventually led to millions of euro in missed income, especially in the tourism industry.

The camorra was able to become central in the garbage disposal system by controlling the dumping grounds, and by infiltrating the garbage collection and hauling system.  The role of the commissioner was intended to oppose the power of the camorra in the collection, transportation, and disposal of garbage.  The commissioner was given special powers by the central government in Rome, to include the authorization to award contracts, without competition, to face an emergency.

The camorra had infiltrated the garbage disposal system by digging and managing illegal dumps.  As older dumps used by the city filled up, the camorra was able to direct the dumping towards its own grounds, allegedly controlling also the companies contracted to transport the collected garbage to the dumps.  Organized crime had the will and the power to create dumps virtually in any location of the Region where power shovels and other mechanical gear could operate.

Several prosecutors in Naples have been investigating the link between construction companies allegedly belonging to organized crime and local politicians.  The magistrates are focusing their attention on those contracts that allegedly have been awarded to companies controlled by organized crime.  These camorra-run companies have been able to underbid competitors because they are able to contain costs by using illegal dumping grounds.  Organized crime is also accused of managing the illegal transportation and disposal of toxic and dangerous waste produced in northern Italy and illegally dumped in Campania.  According to a local regional environmental agency, there are dozens of illegal dumps in Campania, and many contain toxic waste, which is polluting water springs, agricultural lands, and pastures.  Studies are underway to determine the effects of the toxic waste on the health of the population living in the proximity of the illegal dumps.

Office of the Public Prosecutor of Naples

Anthony M. Quattrone

Roberto Saviano, author of the best seller Gomorrah, rejects the offer to become the next president of the Campania Region. Saviano, in an interview on 11 November 2009 with Linea Notte, an Italian nightly new program on state television, RAI 3, stated that “it is not the first time that I receive such an offer, but to be an author, I need to be impartial. I really cannot tie myself to any grouping”. He made the statement in the context of a television program dealing with the request put forward to Parliament, by a prosecutor in Naples, to arrest Nicola Cosentino, the regional coordinator for the center-right Popolo della Libertà (PdL) party. In Italy, Members of Parliament have limited immunity, and they can be arrested only with the consent of chamber to which they belong

Coming out a meeting with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on 12 November 2009, Cosentino confirmed his intention to become a candidate for the office of president of the Campania Region, for the elections that will take place next March, in spite of allegations of collusion with organized crime and the request for his arrest. Cosentino is a member of parliament and an undersecretary for the economy in the Italian government.

At the end of the meeting with the Prime Minister, Cosentino informed the press that he had obtained Berlusconi’s solidarity, and that he had duly informed the Prime Minister that he had no intention of withdrawing from the race for the regional presidency because “it should not be the prosecutors who decide how democratic processes should take place.” According to Cosentino, “there is a wide consensus regarding my candidacy, and I have no intention of giving up, and the Prime Minister has not asked me to bow out”. Thirty senators who belong to the PdL have asked the Minister of Justice to audit the Office of the Public Prosecutor of Naples, to investigate the “climate of conflict” reigning in the office. According to members of the center left parties, Berlusconi’s party is trying to intimidate the magistrates and prosecutors.

Cosentino’s decision to not withdraw his candidacy is causing ferment inside the PdL party. The Member of Parliament, Fabio Granata, vice president of the Antimafia Commission and member of the PdL, is of the opinion that Cosentino should withdraw his candidacy. Granata believes that in accordance with the current turn of events, Cosentino’s candidature is completely inopportune

Granata’s view is supported by the President of the Italian Parliament, Gianfranco Fini, who is a cofounder of the PdL party. Fini stated, during an evening news program on 11 November 2009, that he could “guarantee that Berlusconi is convinced that it is not opportune to put forward the candidacy of the honorable Cosentino. I can reconfirm that Cosentino will not be a candidate.”

It is not clear which of Berlusconi’s alleged statements is the correct one: is it Cosentino’s understanding that Berlusconi is behind him, or is it Fini’s understanding that Berlusconi is against Cosentino’s candidacy?