The speech by Lucia Chessa, candidate for the presidency of the Region in 2024 with the Sardigna R-esiste list
In the history of Sardinia, the summer of 2024 will be remembered for the extraordinary popular movement that developed around the Pratobello bill. The damnatio memorie, meticulously pursued by the Regional Council and its President, and consequently by the Sardinian Regional Council, will not erase the political significance of an unprecedented movement, which mobilized thousands of generous people, who poured their activism and sense of citizenship into the many committees.
Anyone who has attempted to downplay its powerful significance, reducing it to the result of actions orchestrated by anyone, must have done so in bad faith. The theory that 210,000 Sardinians are unwitting puppets, heterosexually directed sheep incapable of understanding and discernment, is offensive and defamatory, and brings shame and dishonor to anyone who has had the courage to support it.
Yet, the extraordinary scale of the political phenomenon—those 210,000 signatures of people who spontaneously lined up to sign—didn't prevent the Regional Council and President Todde from ignoring its powerful impact. Certainly, to ignore that wave required equally powerful doses of institutional arrogance, which have indelibly marked this legislature and its protagonists, and have dug a deep rift between the Sardinians and the government. Let them ignore it, gentlemen, but know that that rift will certainly have its effects in the next regional elections, making it even more urgent to create a real alternative that transcends the current tired, dragging, and futile alternation of a center-right and a center-left truly in need of radical renewal.
The grave violation of the Sardinian people's prerogative, recognized in the Statute of Autonomy, to propose laws by popular initiative, has sparked an unprecedented conflict between the institution and Sardinian society, or rather between the President and Sardinian society. This conflict is incomprehensible to anyone who aspires to worthily represent the forces and thoughts moving in this land, and it becomes plausible only within the following interpretative framework. That President Todde's visit to Sardinia was a parenthesis opened in 2024 and to be closed in 2029. A temporary move, decided elsewhere, conceived in continuity with her role in the Draghi government and the implementation of its decrees regarding what they call energy transition and what we call speculation, colonial assault, plunder, the theft of resources and opportunities from a land that, precisely with those signatures, has asserted rights, self-determination, and its own future-oriented planning.
This is what happened, and time will tell. What will become of that movement, however, is a story yet to be written, and much of its fate will depend on those who had, or have had, or have the political responsibility to develop, within the committees promoting the Pratobello 2024 "revolt," reflections and analyses on future prospects, on the possibilities of keeping that movement alive, keeping it strong and capable of leading the battle to safeguard Sardinia on multiple fronts.
First and foremost, the political representation of those demands, and therefore the most important battle, namely, for an electoral law that would restore to the Sardinian people a regional council that truly represents them, rather than a useless and inefficient apparatus incapable of even addressing the demands that are so forcefully expressed.
This is why I believe the Pratobello Network's retreat from the call for a new Sardinian electoral law was a major strategic error. Not only because a real alternative, made up of new forces and energies, must finally find representation (which will be impossible with the electoral law unchanged), but above all because a movement remains vital only if it is capable of observing reality from broad and diverse perspectives, identifying its flaws, exposing its most pressing critical issues, and then acting accordingly.
Several committees, many citizens, and many generous activists have participated in the Rete SarDegna popular initiative that I represent (born after the Pratobello Network's disengagement), which will soon bring the "Liberamus su Votu" electoral law proposal to the Regional Council, demanding that it not suffer the same fate as the Pratobello law.
But it was, in my opinion, a missed opportunity for the Pratobello '24 popular movement in its entirety, for its structuring and organic unity, for its consolidation in the Sardinian cultural landscape, including political and not necessarily electoral, but, above all, for the destructuring of the center-left/center-right duopoly that has caused and continues to cause so many disasters in the governance of this land.
Whoever pushed for this disengagement, whether out of self-interest, lack of vision, or exhaustion, deprived Sardinia of a great opportunity.
Lucia Chessa
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The response from the Editor of the L'Unione Sarda Group, Sergio Zuncheddu
I agree with much of what you wrote, but I'll focus, so as not to repeat, on the part where you describe the Pratobello initiative as a missed opportunity to amend the regional electoral law, as well as on your assertion that those who deprived Sardinia of a great opportunity are to blame. I, in fact, am responsible. When Emilio Demuro, your closest representative, raised the issue, I said I didn't agree with the idea of "contaminating" the Pratobello initiative with a purely political parallel, even if legitimate in itself.
And that we would not have supported it precisely because of the "political contamination" of the popular initiative law that would have resulted from it.
I also said that I had decided to engage the publishing group, as no one else has ever done, not for political reasons but exclusively to defend the Sardinian landscape, which is at serious risk of permanent damage, as I have repeatedly stated.
I did this—and I am paying the heavy consequences, I assure you—because I felt it was my moral duty, a duty that requires no other incentive than that of fulfilling it without any other purpose or interest.
My sole objective was, and is, like that of our journalists, to promote the adoption of a law of constitutional rank by exercising the powers reserved to us by the Autonomous Statute to halt energy speculation and protect the landscape, a precious resource, both limited and of inestimable economic value to the Sardinian community.
This is still a current objective for me, including updating and extending the PPR with the consent of the affected populations, as I wrote in Buongiorno SarDegna and as repeatedly proposed by the Committee for Insularity in the Constitution.
And I will remain committed until our landscape is secured.
"Contaminating" (excuse the term, but it's true) that wonderful initiative, in which you actively participated, would have meant undermining the success of the consensus achieved and risking, regardless of intentions, hurting the 210,000 people who voted unanimously to defend Sardinia, not a plan to amend the regional electoral law.
And using that healthy, sincere and passionate participation for an additional purpose other than the declared one would not have been, let's say, appropriate.
Indeed, those who have confidently believed in the purpose of the press and communications campaign by US, VL, RL, and us.it, along with the commendable work of the committees established for this purpose, deserve that we continue to do everything within our power to honestly fulfill our primary moral duty: to defend and protect the beautiful landscapes of Sardinia.
Exactly what we said we wanted to do from the very beginning.
Sergio Zuncheddu
