Around fifteen Italian flags (out of 120 signatories of a supporting document), flags from the three unions, parliamentarians from Campo Largo (among them Silvio Lai and Marco Meloni of the Democratic Party, Francesca Ghirra of Avs, Sabrina Licheri of the Five Star Movement), regional councilors and assessors: approximately 2,000 gathered in Piazza Palazzo, home to the Prefecture (and the Viceregio Palace, a symbol of Savoy rule on the island), for the demonstration called by the Region against the government's plan to transfer over a third of the island's 41 bis prisoners to three prisons.
Associations, movements, and unions took the stage to explain their reasons for rejecting the concentration of mafia bosses, ranging from the administration of justice to healthcare, and the risk of infiltration into the territories where they will be hosted.
"We don't want to be penalized with yet another servitude," emphasized Regional President Alessandra Todde, "and I believe this rally should serve, not to be against it, but to say that we want a different Sardinia, that we want respect for the Sardinians. This rally is important," she added, "also to support parliamentary initiatives. We want to remove the preference for island areas from Article 41-bis because it is discriminatory, it goes against what we wrote in the Constitution."
Then Todde calls for an institutional meeting: "They come to Sardinia to campaign for the referendum and won't sit at an institutional meeting. This isn't respectful, and we demand respect."
"As we have already stated in the Regional Council, when we approved a motion by a large majority, we reject this proposal. It is not just a proposal for numbers, but a strategy by the national government to transfer additional maximum-security prisoners to the island," said Regional Council President Piero Comandini. "We absolutely do not want to shirk our responsibility to contribute to state security, to legality, and to the fight against the mafia. However, we do not want to be faced with a fait accompli."
