WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI, #181: SARDINIA TO VOTE (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

On February 24th we will vote in Sardinia and there is a lot of talk
about candidacies, but little is known and little is said about the
problems of the island and the programs that the various political
forces are proposing. Rather than being divided on the investigations
concerning the outgoing governor Solinas, who seems to have thought more
about his own affairs than those of the island and who has stood out for
his decidedly unsuccessful management of COVID and has left the island
largely defenseless - perhaps due to the his well-known anti-vax
sympathies - it would be appropriate to address the real problems of a
region with a special statute which preserves a deep crisis in its
economy and a rapid march towards depopulation.
On the island, the relative poverty index went from 13.9% in 2020 to
16.1%, 2.2% more in the following year.
Around 110 thousand Sardinian families are in great difficulty. This is
certified by the data from the 17th Report on poverty and social
exclusion in Sardinia drawn up by the regional Caritas delegation. The
legal population of the island, reported as of December 31, 2021,
amounts to 1,587,413 residents and has decreased by 3.2% compared to
2011; with the exception of the metropolitan city of Cagliari, where
there was a slight increase (+0.2%), all the other provinces suffered
significant decreases. Oristano is the most affected province with a 7%
decrease. Compared to 2020, the census data show a decrease of 2,631
people in the region. At the provincial level, Nuoro loses 1,141
residents and also records the largest relative decrease (-0.6%), while
in Cagliari and Sassari the population remains stable. The average age
of the population is 46.8 years compared to 45.2 in Italy. The
comparison with the 2011 Census data highlights a progressive aging of
the population, at a rate higher than the national average. All age
groups under 45 see their relative weight decrease compared to 2011
(ISTAT 2022 Census data).
In 2021, 53.6% of people in Sardinia were employed. Female employment
stands at around 46.3%; the data relating to male employment also
improves (60.7% in 2021 compared to 59.0% in 2020). The trend of
employed people in services is decreasing, while it is increasing in the
industrial sector. The increased female employment after the end of
Covid is concentrated in the services and tourism sectors with the
resumption of tourist flows to the island. If we look at the employment
sectors that characterize the labor market and the productive structure
of the island, we note that the economy of Sardinia is mainly based on
the tertiary sector, although a role of a certain importance is played
by both the mining and industrial sectors from the agro-pastoral sector
and above all from tourism.

The Region and the Sardinian economy

Despite being a region with a special statute, Sardinia has not managed
to use the powers at its disposal to provide the island with an
infrastructure network essential to its development. Communications are
extremely poor and the island is traversable from north to south with
difficulty. The road system does not allow rapid connections between the
5 provinces and leaves many areas of the island isolated. Greater
liveliness is recorded during the summer season when tourism pours onto
the island thousands of temporary residents who occupy the structures
built on the island's coasts, many of which are high class, to the point
that the nightlife and the presence of a wealthy clientele. It is no
coincidence that the development in employment that we were reporting
concerns that of women and is mainly directed towards hotel and tourism
support services.
Tourist development has taken the place of mining which was historically
the prevalent activity on the island which has the highest number of
mineral deposits in the country. However, mining activities on the
island have decreased over time because the mines have become
progressively less competitive and productive, but also due to the lack
of investments that would renew the extraction technologies. The result
is the progressive and irreversible crisis in the island's mining park
with now historic crisis areas such as that of Iglesiente and Porto
Torres where some of the industrial activities survive in fatigue and
uncertainty.

The agri-food activity represents another of the island's strong points,
with mainly sheep breeding. The island's dairy products have struggled
to maintain a positive placement relationship on the market, but here
too there is a lack of infrastructure networks and investments to allow
a more effective and competitive placement of the product on the market.
Fishing presents the same problems, although it constitutes one of the
activities that could allow, even by using fish cultivation areas, a
more modern production activity and a position on the fish market
provided that effective and fast communication networks are created,
which are totally lacking.
Due to the general crisis involving air and maritime transport,
connections with the island have in fact entered into crisis and even in
this sector there have been no significant investments and convincing
interventions by the Region aimed at addressing and resolving this
serious problem which leaves the island abandoned to itself and sees a
revival of communication, albeit partial and difficult, only in the
summer months with the development of the tourist flow.
Careful and responsible management of the regional structure should be
distinguished by the adoption of an investment plan. The outgoing
council was extremely poor in proposing and planning investments, taking
advantage of the PNRR opportunity and now the island will have to face
its problems in a situation of lack of availability of capital on the
financial and investment market.
On a political level, the right-wing management of the island's
government proved to be a failure, also because it occurred by
distorting the role of an important political force in the history of
the island, that of the Action Party, a socialist-oriented party founded
by Lussu , which saw its political approach totally changed with the
transition on the right-wing front, which handed the island over to this
political party.
The possible relaunch of the economic development of the island can only
pass through a renewal of the government's political lines and greater
participation and involvement of the island's populations in the
management of choices and in social development, which necessarily
passes through a review of the positions to be undertaken with respect
to tourist investments on the island, to protect the environment and for
the adoption of sustainable development which favors the protection of
the landscape and the environment and at the same time allows the
development of a more widespread distribution of the tourist flow which
involves the internal territories of the island both by rediscovering an
often uncontaminated landscape and environment, but also by creating the
infrastructures that connect the interior of the island to its coasts,
in order to allow widespread and differentiated use of the resources
offered by the territory . Sardinia also has something to offer the
tourist healthy and genuine nutrition and a high quality of life.
These are widespread aspirations among the population of which, however,
no trace is found in the party programmes, which suggests that the rate
of abstention from the electorate, even on this occasion, will only
grow, proof of which is that in the last elections one in two Sardinian
voters chose not to vote. In fact, the turnout stopped at 52.5 percent:
thirteen percentage points less than in the 2018 elections. Voters from
the big cities did not vote, but not even those from smaller towns where
door-to-door and direct relationship with candidates. The gap, compared
to the national figure which for the island is close to eleven
percentage points (third from last in the national ranking). Voter
participation is also affected by a cumbersome electoral system (with
the impossibility of expressing preferences) which increases the gap
between voters and parties, seen as too distant from the people and
increasingly self-referential

G.L.

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/01/23/sardegna-al-voto/
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