The Party of Communist Alternative (PdAC) is standing a revolutionary program and workers and students candidacies in the regional elections of Apulia (Southern Italy) [1]. Most of our candidates are representatives of the last years struggles in Apulia (from OM Carelli to Telecom and the Italian Mail, to the struggles of workers and against the Gelmini reform [2] or the Buona scuola [3] of the prime minister Matteo Renzi, to the student protests). Our candidate is Michele Rizzi, temporary worker of a call center with a degree in Political Science at the University of Bari. This article is the result of an interview with Michele.
We decided to stand at the regional elections for one simple reason, explains Michele, because we want to give political representation to workers who lost their jobs, precarious workers in the struggle for job stability, the unemployed with no income, immigrants increasingly enslaved, students in the struggle for public schools, to women who struggle against homophobia and sexism. The capitalist system is making the working class pay heavily for its crisis, producing thousands and thousands of unemployed and laid-off. After being enriched with public money given away by the center-right government of Fitto and the center-left government of Vendola, the Apulian employers make investments in other areas of the world, relocating production and leaving many workers aghast.
Our policy, continues Michele, is that of encouraging struggles. In recent months we have been in the forefront of struggles at Om Carelli, Natuzzi, Sangalli, Ecoleather, Telecom, Italian Mail, Ilva, Bar.sa and many others also in Salento and elsewhere in the region. As well as in student protests and in the universities, as in the struggles against the closure of public hospitals (20 closed by the center-left government), the cut of hospital beds and whole departments. Struggles against environmental devastation (against garbage dump in Grottelline, Martano, Corigliano d’Otranto and Trani) and in support of the Committees No to coal in Brindisi, for the protection of the natural reserve Torre Guaceto, against the gas pipeline Tap in Salento and against the air pollution caused by Ilva company at Taranto and the cement plant and Timac company at Barletta. Against waste management linked to a devastating business and for a law on zero waste. Against trade agreements between Israel and Apulia.
Our campaign aims at “giving voice to the voiceless.”
The other playing forces
Figure: Region of Apulia, Italy.
The center-left, explains Rizzi, is led by the former mayor of Bari, Michele Emiliano, who represents Renzi’s policy in Apulia. He supports the Jobs Act and Buona scuola, against which we have struggled in recent months. He’s a Liberal candidate defender of economic lobbying and capitalist powers. This coalition gathers together several escapees from the center, the UDC, the Democratic Party, the SEL [4] and the PDCI, in an impressive cauldron which is the favorite to win in the post-Vendola era. In short, nothing new.
The center-right presents itself divided between the candidate of Berlusconi, Poli Bortone, and Schittulli, backed by Fitto. The Movimento 5 Stelle (Movement 5 Stars) with Laricchia, a former center-righter. The Altra Puglia (Another Apulia) with Riccardo Rossi, a civic coalition whose “golden share” is in the hands of what remains of the PRC (Party of Communist Refoundation) who ruled the region with the PD (Democratic Party, the former Italian CP) for 8 years out of 10 and with Michele Emiliano for five years out of 10. Basically a false opposition with a very moderate program who does not give a working class and fighting response to the capitalist economic crisis that is gripping the Apulia region, proposing the same old and certainly bankruptcy solutions. Finally Verdi Mariggiò who has stood at the last moment after missing the agreement with Altra Puglia.
The Communist Alternative, Rizzi concludes, is the only communist and revolutionary political force that is standing in this election in Apulia, which is present in the struggles since their inception, which will use this space to advertise its electoral program of revolutionary anti-capitalist alternative, conscious that the system will not be overthrown by bourgeois elections, but with the unified mass struggles.
In every sense, then, we differ from what remains of the wrecked Italian left: not only from the explicitly reformists (SEL and Refoundation), but also from forces that (incomprehensibly) refer to themselves as “Trotskyist”, as the PCL [5].
An appraisal of Vendola’s government
An appraisal of the administration of the regional incumbent is certainly a must. In fact we consider it definitely negative from the point of view of the weaker. Vendola has funded the employers who outsource companies, has funded private schools while public schools languish, he authorized the creation of biomass power plants while Apulia already produces more than twice its necessity and continued the privatization of public health started by Fitto.
The Communist Alternative program is anti-capitalist. Specifically, Michele says, we demand the expropriation of the factories under workers control and the cutting of all public funding to employers. A fight against precarious jobs, starting with the abolition of all temporary employment and job stability for all workers, as well as the imposition of social insurance for the unemployed funded by the money from cuts of public funding to employers.
We demand the re-statization of public health, ending the agreements with private companies, the end of outsourcing of services and staff and the elimination of waiting lists for medical specialists visits. Also important is the fight against the outsourcing of health service, especially in Salento.
It’s also needed a program of revitalization of public schools with teachers training by the state and the elimination of funding for private schools. A program of public and free cultural events. A mobility project with free public transport for the most vulnerable.
On environment, it must be said that Apulia produces more than twice the energy it needs, so the fight against energy business, against nuclear, biomass energy, etc. Fierce opposition to drilling in the Adriatic and to the gas pipeline Tap in Salento, these big projects that destroy the environment to the benefit of the multinational oil and gas companies!
We will also bargain all trade agreements between Israel and Apulia.
We are certain, concludes Michele Rizzi, to face this new task with the spirit of building a revolutionary party that can be at the front line of the class struggle in our own region. For this, we will use the electoral campaignthe best we can, because a revolutionary Apulia is possible, of workers and students in struggle against the economic powers and their political appendages.
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Notes:
[1] – Apulia (Italian: Puglia) is a region in Southern Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea in the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Strait of Òtranto and Gulf of Taranto in the south.
[2] – The term Gelmini reform usually indicates the set of normative acts of the Italian Republic – issued during the Berlusconi government IV – regarding the education sector which came into force during the tenure of Minister of Education, University and Research, Mariastella Gelmini.
[3] – Buona scuola (Good School): it’s an education reform implemented by the prime minister Matteo Renzi.
[4] – SEL: Left Ecology Freedom party, led by Nichi Vendola, president of Apulia region since 2005.
[5] – PCL: Workers Communist Party
