“In the last year, rent prices increased by 10% and food increased by 25%. With the same salary, you can no longer afford to spend. We have the most expensive bill in Europe, and the most right-wing government in the history of the republic responded by cutting schools and health services, blocking the minimum wage and leaving out additional energy benefits. This is why they have done nothing about the high bill for three years.” The Secretary of the Democratic Party also warmed up the audience in Bari, Elly Schleinin the final tour of Antonio Decaroo’s election campaign in Puglia.
“I met a boy at the airport who earned 3.50 euros an hour in a restaurant: he had to go to France, and in six months he became a director, earning 2,700 euros. We must not accept a world where Elon Musk can provide billionaire salaries while friendly governments like Trump and Meloni block the minimum wage for millions of workers. The first thing we will do in a national government is agree on a minimum wage: below nine euros an hour is not work, it is exploitation.”
Moments earlier, Decaro welcomed the leader in the San Pio neighborhood, on the northern outskirts of Bari, offering him a beer, straight from a tap behind the counter. This is the city’s social brewery founded two years ago and run by kids in the former gym of a school that was abandoned for years. “From working president to tap president”, joked Puglia’s presidential candidate. Along with the secretary of the Democratic Party, there was party president Stefano Bonaccini and with him Decaro – his colleague in the European Parliament – jokingly offered him a glass of beer with a little beer because “I know you, Stefano, are a bit of an alcoholic”. Then inside the room people shouted “Bella ciao”.
On the one hand, the amnesty launched by the Government “a few days before the election” removes provisions “from Silvio Berlusconi in 2003″; on the other hand “cancellation of rental funds that help families in trouble”: Democratic Party secretary Elly Schlein this is in stark contrast to what the center-right promised and what they have so far denied, days before regional elections in Puglia, Veneto and Campania.
In Barletta – where he started his Sunday in support of the Region’s presidential candidate, dem MEP Antonio Decaro – starting from a topic very close to the hearts of Apulians in the months in which many centers discovered the problem of overtourism: housing prices. “The rental funds have been cancelled. We ask for the funds to be returned, tripled, and investment in public housing, because the waiting list there is also very long,” he said.
Decaro’s ambition, racing alone in Puglia to beat the abstentions
by our correspondent Annalisa Cuzzocrea
In addition to the secretary, the president of the democratic party and the governor of Emilia-Romagna Stefano Bonaccini: “I can no longer count the amnesties. Giorgia Meloni he said they wouldn’t do it again, but I understand Matteo Salvini gaining increasing traction. They need some election tips”. Both attacked the maneuver and recalled that the PNRR funds were fundamental to recent GDP growth. Bonaccini highlighted that “The government has no industrial policy”, Schlein that “in the maneuver there is no help for the business world”. The Democratic Party leader then spoke about health care: “One of the futures is proximity, which means close. Enough with cuts to people with disabilities, enough with cuts to those who live alone and are vulnerable.”
Di Decaro said that “he will be able to put public health at the center”, that he has a “complete program” and that he also talked “about how to help small and medium-sized businesses in this area”. Schlein then recalled that “the fight against every mafia is in our DNA” and called “to move forward with this rigor to avoid any kind of pollution”.
The appeal sounds more relevant than ever in Puglia where, a few days ago, a new episode of vote exchange emerged in the last local and European elections. Decaro was sensitive to the issue, having been embarrassed by the Interior Ministry’s appointment of an Anti-Mafia Access Commission as mayor. At the end of the work, it was confirmed that there had been no infiltration into the organization, but the PD MEP today took a cautious step and praised the new names, after claiming that the governor Michele Emiliano undescribed: “The president’s list is a list created to give opportunities to people who might never get into the Regional Council,” he explains. “I want to give opportunities to new voices that perhaps we have never heard and who will have the opportunity to occupy new spaces – he continued – Even on other lists I see a lot of new candidates and a lot of young candidates”.
From Barletta, Schlein also sent a message to his party and its allies: “We are trying to give the Democratic Party what it has long lacked: a ruling class capable of unity, stubbornly united. The unity of the Democratic Party is necessary, but not sufficient, to build coalition unity. This unity is the indispensable premise for realizing this right.”
