MESSINA. “I will wait 48 hours for a change in the law, if the legitimate answer that we ask for does not arrive, on Sunday at 10 we will be here on the quay of the port and we will block the Strait”. Two years ago, the mayor of Messina Cateno De Luca made the direct Facebook in which he threatened to block the Strait because not enough anti-Covid checks were carried out on those entering Sicily. Today he came back online with the same threat, but for the opposite reason. The Super Green Pass, mandatory since January 10th also for those who get on the ferries that cross the Strait of Messina, proved to be a cleaver for many travelers, especially frontier travelers and, for those who invoked it, a boomerang.
Emblematic in this sense is the story of a Palermo commercial agent, Fabio Messina, who is not vaccinated and who last Monday was rejected by the employees of the Caronte shipping company at the landing stages of Villa San Giovanni, in Calabria. The man was camped on the street for days also because, for the same reason that he does not have a Super Green Pass, he could not even go to the hotel waiting for the situation to unblock. The outcome of this came today when the court of Reggio Calabria, which he addressed with two lawyers from the Messina and Trapani courts, agreed with him, “authorizing” him to ferry.
The only restriction that the judge has ordered is that Messina carry out an antigenic swab before boarding and wear an Ffp2 mask for the entire trip: “We reserve the right to investigate the legal reasons for the decision – said the lawyers Grazia Cutino and Maura Galletta – but we can immediately say that we have very favorably welcomed the provision of the civil court of Reggio Calabria thanks to which Mr. Messina will be able to ferry to Sicily. We are very happy to have brought him home ». Messina spent the last two nights in the house of a Calabrian family who had welcomed him out of solidarity.
Fabio Messina’s is not an isolated case. The same mayor De Luca, who will resign from office in the next few days because he wants to run for the presidency of the Sicilian Region, during the live social network called a Cataniaese who left on January 2 to accompany his wife to Rome where he had to undergo urgent surgery , and now he cannot return because he is not vaccinated and therefore does not have the Green Pass. The ticket inspectors of the private company Caronte and those of the State Railways in these first days of application of the rule on the Super Green Pass have had to “reject” several travelers, both on the Sicilian side and on the Calabrian side of the Strait.
“We want the modification of the discipline concerning the Green Pass which violates the territorial continuity that concerns all the islands, from Sicily to Sardinia – said the mayor of Messina -. The Sicilians are being kidnapped. I asked the state with two notes. Many families cannot leave Sicily for urgent medical interventions and many who have left Sicily cannot return. The controversy about No Vax has nothing to do with it, on the contrary I am for vaccination with a law that obliges everyone to be vaccinated and that forces the state to take responsibility for any eventuality. But the territorial continuity of the islands must be ensured ».