An obvious disproportion. In just a few days, it turned into an exquisitely political controversy. Which, for more than a week, has involved half of Florence. The city’s news reports that an opera singer, more precisely a tenor, was fined for performing without authorization (a very serious crime) in the squares of the historic center. To “stop” it, as if it were an Islamic terrorist threat, four municipal police patrols “had to” intervene. Four. During the operations, numerous citizens literally protested against the men in uniform. The reason? Misha, a 36-year-old Israeli boy, who has been in Tuscany for about a year, with his powerful but soft voice, captured the attention of citizens and tourists. Suddenly, the Christmas atmosphere was broken by the intervention of the police, which triggered the anger of those present, outraged by an intervention considered exaggerated towards a person who was just singing.
The news, reported by local newspapers, quickly spread online. And thousands attacked the municipal administration. Who promptly tried to run away to protect himself. When issuing a diligent press release. “The patrol from the central area department intervened at the scene – said commander Francesco Passaretti – who was there for normal territorial guard interventions and tried to fulfill his duty. Only following the tenor’s repeated complaints and his obvious provocations did the operators correctly decide to call other colleagues for help. Maybe they would have done better to walk away, leaving the message that if you’re good you can’t respect the rules either? I don’t think so.” Classic example of when the patch is worse than the hole.
However, two aspects need to be clarified: the police forces only did their job and the issue is obviously political, of direction, of the idea of a city that the Nardella administration and the Democratic Party want to give to Florence. The main questions that the Florentines asked themselves were essentially three. Because the same diligence was not used in clearing the old Astor hotel, a structure illegally occupied for months by South Americans and Romanians, which swallowed little Kata, the five-year-old Peruvian girl who disappeared in June amid widespread attacks. indifference? Why doesn’t the same rigor apply to the more than one hundred and fifty illegal African immigrants who, every day, traffic heroin and cocaine in broad daylight in Cascine Park? Because Palazzo Vecchio’s only interest seems to be to charge fines, make money from telepasses that penalize infractions of just one kilometer per hour, impose absurd urban limits of 30 km/h, ban the circulation of cars that are only ten years old and eliminate parking I do not pay? Questions that will determine, over a thousand (very boring) ideological aspects, the June clash between Sara Funaro, Eike Schmidt and Stefania Saccardi.
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
