PD drops 'cronyist' De Luca amendment

(ANSA) - Rome, November 22 - The Democratic Party (PD) on Tuesday shelved a proposed amendment to the 2017 budget that would have rescinded a ban on regional governors also serving as health commissioners. "I will submit a proposal that will take (the objections) into account," budget rapporteur and PD MP Mauro Guerra told the House finance committee. The measure was dropped after the opposition - the populist euroskeptic 5-Star Movement (M5S), the rightwing anti-immigrant Northern League, and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi's center-right Forza Italia (FI) party - claimed it amounted to cronyism because it would favor PD Campania Governor Vincenzo De Luca.
    M5S MPs followed this up with an announcement at a press conference that they will appeal to the Campania judiciary and to the parliamentary anti-mafia commission over the so-called De Luca amendment.
    The opposition based its accusations of cronyism on an interview yesterday in which Renzi upheld De Luca as "an example of good government" when he served as mayor of Salerno. De Luca's last term as mayor of the Campania city lasted from June 2006 to January 2015.
    "I don't agree with his methods but if the whole South had been run like Salerno we'd have an additional point of GDP," Renzi told business paper Sole 24 Ore's Radio 24. Reporters were questioning the premier about audio footage that surfaced, in which De Luca urged Campania mayors to vote 'Yes' on a December 4 referendum on Renzi's constitutional reform law for reasons including the fact that government is allocating funds to Campania. "Yes, we're earmarking a lot of money for Campania, because it's shameful that some regions aren't laboring under the same conditions as others," Renzi replied.
    "If (the) Pompeii (archeological site), collapses the entire country will look bad, not just Campania".
    For his part, De Luca replied today that Italy is mired in paralysis and that "one quip will earn you entire pages in the newspapers".
    "I get depressed when I think about how things are done in other countries, how much energy is invested in concrete things, and how many absolutely pointless idiocies are erased from public life there," the southern governor said in Naples. "It's no coincidence Nature herself stresses this characteristic of ours: we're the only country in Europe with two active volcanoes - Etna and Vesuvius - because we're the biggest producers of hot air in the world".