Calabria, the new health commissioner is the former rector Gaudio. Gino Strada: “Tandem does not exist, available on concrete things”

Giuseppe Zuccatelli is forced to leave and the Calabria has its third Commissioner for Health within two weeks. But it’s not Gino Strada. The government has chosen the former rector of La Sapienza University Eugenio Gaudio – investigated a Catania in maxi-inquiry on the alleged rigged contests in the University of Etna – to restore the sector and address theCoronavirus emergency. Initially sources of Palazzo Chigi had made it known that the founder of Emergency he would have been available to join the team with a “special delegation”, but then Strada himself intervened on Facebook declaring that the tandem with Gaudio “it just doesn’t exist“. “I repeat that I have given to the Prime Minister my availability to help out in Calabria, but we still have to define what it is in what terms“, He explains, expressing his discomfort for“ a situation where we talk about something Still to be defined“. His involvement in the relaunch of Calabrian health, therefore, remains on the table as long as “concrete projects that are of help to Calabrian citizens “.

The choice of the executive matured within a few hours: at lunchtime the Minister of Health Roberto Speranza called Zuccatelli, at the center of the controversy for his sentences on coronavirus, asking him to step back just a week after his choice as the successor of Saverio Cotticelli, the former general forced to step back after interviewing Title V in which he reported that he did not know who was to implement the plan to deal with the pandemic. Zuccatelli has also renounced the post of commissioner of theHospital of Catanzaro he was born in Mater Domini University Polyclinic, always in Catanzaro. “With the same speed with which I accepted, I resign at the request of Minister Hope for respect that I have and have always had for the institutions ”, he declared, reiterating however that“ with the support of the executive ”he would remain. To download it in the past few hours had not only been the Five Stars, but also Matteo Renzi e Leu, a party for which Zuccatelli was a candidate in 2018 and to which the chosen commissioner is considered very close.

Gaudio, a doctor from Cosenza, has been there since last April consultant of the Minister of the University Gaetano Manfredi he will therefore hold the office of commissioner, while the founder of Emergency would have a role from external consultant. Even if his involvement is still in doubt. Government sources claim that during the day there was a long conversation between Strada and the premier Giuseppe Conte, during which the doctor confirmed his availability. The prime minister stressed the need to build field hospitals in the areas of the Region most affected by the pandemic, such as Catanzaro e Reggio Calabria. Among the men of the majority, however, not all agree on the choice of the former rector: “He will certainly be a person very valid, but in Calabria, for many different reasons – among them the need to fight the ‘ndrangheta with his infiltrations in health companies – not good, ”says the president of the anti-mafia commission Nicola Morra referring to Gaudio. “We expect Gino Strada, for all that he symbolically represents, to play a formidable role nell’rehabilitation work of Calabrian healthcare “. The regent president of Calabria rejoices Nino Spirlì: “We asked the government, insistently, to represent us from a Calabrian who could take control of the situation by knowing its breath. The government has understood this, has accepted it and today has proposed the rector Gaudio as commissioner who has a medical career that never ends, a truly excellent curriculum “.

Zuccatelli had never spoken since the announcement of the appointment (about a week ago). In the morning he had decided to break the silence with an interview with Tgr Rai Calabria, denouncing that he “has not yet received the appointment decree”: a passage that had left the deliveries pending with his predecessor Cotticelli. The impasse was released by a phone call from Minister Speranza, given that Zuccatelli had announced: “Me I do not resign spontaneously from the position for which I was designated, but if I am asked by the minister I am willing to do so ”. Still at the Tgr Calabria, Zuccatelli had also spoken of the controversies concerning him. In this regard, he said, the video in which he said that masks are not needed and that to get infected you need a kiss with the tongue for a quarter of an hour is “definitely nonsense“. But he also acquitted himself: “At that time we were in the first phase of the pandemic”, he said without however recalling that the statements date back to May and therefore not even at the beginning of the spread of the infections. “I’m not a denier”, the commissioner reiterated. Zuccatelli, however, did not explain another slip in which he became the protagonist not in May, but not later than Friday when a request for clarification from a correspondent of Title V (the program of Rai3 who had already been “responsible” for the expulsion of his predecessor, Saverio Cotticelli) had answered on Whatsapp with a link that sent to the right-wing nationalist site Imolaoggi which reported a controversial study against masks.

During the day, the leader of Italy Viva Matteo Renzi: “If Gino Strada is really available to be commissioner for health in Calabria – he wrote on Facebook – the prime minister and the minister of health can do only one thing to remedy the Cotticelli-Zuccatelli mess: sign today the appointment of Gino Strada as commissioner for health in Calabria. Physically accompany him to Catanzaro. And give him all the powers ”. In the afternoon, however, after the rumors regarding the name of Gaudio, both Ettore Rosato that Ernesto Magorno they said they were in favor of his appointment. Also for the senator from Leu Loredana De Petris, a member of the party believed to be close to Zuccatelli, asked for a position from the executive: “The government must now break the delay and immediately grasp the willingness confirmed by Strada to accept the post of extraordinary commissioner of Calabria”. The national spokesman of the Italian Left joined De Petris Nicola Fratoianni: “I said it immediately and today I repeat it. The appointment of Zuccatelli in Calabria is a mistake that should have been remedied. Now we discover that Gino Strada has given his availability by asking for a simple simple thing: not to be the subject of a facade operation and to have a clear mandate. What is the government waiting for? Name him immediately “.

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