«A month ago they told me I was running for second place, now the challenge for me is to finish first». Pierfrancesco Majorino this morning in Milan at the presentation of his civic list underlines that (“with respect for Letizia Moratti”) the electoral battle at the polls in Lombardy will be between him and the current governor Attilio Fontana who is attempting an encore. “We must bring fresh air to Lombardy: it is a collective bet that I am very honored to represent,” adds the center-left and M5s candidate. The list is made up of a heterogeneous civic world, which “represents a political project, not an electoral cartel”, as the coordinator Walter Andreazza says from the stage, daughter of the “journey made before by Ambrosoli and Gori”, Majorino points out. He ranges from exponents of the Radicals, such as Barbara Bonvicini and Giulia Crivellini, to Luca Paladini, founder and spokesperson of I Sentinelli, and Alicia Ambrosini of Possibile.
There are two interventions that the candidate would like to implement within the first hundred days of his mandate if he were to be elected. First of all, a provision «to reduce the waiting list times» for medical visits and then to identify «a place in social housing, on an unused ground floor in a difficult district of Milan, where to put the President’s office» to shorten the distance between citizens and institutions.
Healthcare is at the center of the political program of the Pd MEP (which will be presented next week) also by looking at some names of the candidates on the civic list: from the virologist Fabrizio Pregliasco (leader in Milan), to the neonatal intensive care doctor and councilor of +Europe, Michele Usuelli, up to the psychologist Mauro Grimoldi.
And it is precisely Pregliasco who, on the sidelines of his speech on stage, does not deny his aspiration to hold the position of regional health councilor: «I am available to the coalition and I feel competent in this area» and adds «it seems to me something that it would complement my career in public health, operations and social services.” According to the medical director of the Galeazzi Orthopedic Institute, in fact, in the Moratti-branded reform there have been «only timid attempts to intervene on territorial medicine and digitization which instead are the bet of the future. The Covid emergency has highlighted how progressive assistance methods are needed. The community houses as they are now are empty boxes, what to build is the element of approach to the territory and to the people. We need to intervene on waiting lists and on the central role of the family doctor».
Another important issue for Majorino is the housing emergency: «We have to reassign 15,000 lodgings unfortunately left empty in metropolitan areas with thousands of homeless people as well as using part of the ground floors where teams of nurses and people from the third sector could lend a hand and be bearers of hope”. The candidate then addresses Fontana directly, inviting him to be “less arrogant” and accept public confrontation with the other protagonists of the race for the lead of the Pirellone because “he is demonstrating fear and weakness in terms of content”.
Finally, Majorino expresses his perplexity about various aspects of the autonomy reform, the League’s workhorse: «Autonomy as a lever to strike at public schools seems to me a dangerous thing. I think autonomy is needed as a support for local communities, territories and cities. I believe that the Lombardy Region must support the mayors much more in doing well. It hasn’t been like this until now.”