“Why is nothing done in the face of such an obvious disaster?” He asked Richard Magi, deputy of the Radical party and promoter with the "Let's mobilize Rome" committee of the referendum to be held in the capital Sunday 11 November on the tendering of the transport service.
The Capitoline public transport is now managed by Atac, company 100% controlled by the Municipality of Rome with 1,3 billion in debt, for which the administration led by Virginia Raggi requested and obtained the arrangement with creditors procedure, considered the only way to avoid bankruptcy. “Today, however, the way in which the company is managed aims only to keep it standing, not to improve the service”, explains Magi. A service that has often been at the center of controversy in recent months due to buses that went up in flames, missed trips, old vehicles and vehicles subject to poor maintenance.
According to the proponents of Yes, there is only one way to resolve the chaos that has characterized Rome's local transport for years and that is to compete for service and at the same time favor the opening to non-scheduled forms of collective public transport. These are, on the other hand, the two questions citizens will be asked to answer on Sunday.
To weigh on the outcome of the consultation, however, there will not only be any responses from the Romans - who will have to choose between Yes and No - but also the turnout: the fewer people going to vote, the easier it will be to ignore the result of this referendum.
FIRSTonline asked Riccardo Magi to delve into the "reasons of Yes" and above all to respond to those that seem to be citizens' concerns about the outcome of the vote.
Honorable Magi, what prompted you to promote this referendum?
“We asked ourselves a question about public transport: why nothing is done in the face of such an obvious disaster? Public transport that doesn't work in a metropolis has a devastating impact on the quality of life of citizens and also entails an innumerable series of consequences. Rome is an unattractive city for productive activities, a paralyzed city, a city where it takes hours to do anything, not to mention the pollution and the quality of the air we breathe. Last year we had the road accident record again.
All this makes living in Rome appear like a sacrifice, unless you live in those few privileged areas served by the subway.
With this referendum we want to attack the management part of the problem, which is the main one, the way in which the Municipality entrusts the service. Leaving aside Atac's financial situation, the point is that the company does not respect the service contract. And it does it repeatedly. Faced with this reality, however, the municipal administration does nothing. Or rather, when it does something, when it applies penalties for example, these have no effect because obviously for the Municipality, applying penalties to Atac means applying them to itself. Nonetheless it is thought that the custody en casa is the most efficient and cheapest way to carry out the service.
We don't just blame the current administration for this reality. It is evident that the situation in which Atac finds itself, which in some ways is irrecoverable, was only possible due to a laxity that lasted for many years. But it must be admitted that the way in which the company is managed today only aims to keep the structure standing, not to provide a service. And this, as citizens, pisses us off."
However, many see in this referendum only a way that will lead to the privatization of the local public transport service with a consequent increase in ticket prices. You, on the other hand, maintain that you are betting on liberalisation. Is there really a difference?
“Of course, it is technically a liberalization because privatization concerns the nature of an entity. With this referendum we are not dealing with the company, whether public or private, which has to manage the service, but with the way in which the Municipality entrusts it.
Currently the service is entrusted en casa, that is, the Municipality entrusts it to a company that it controls 100 percent. Instead, we want him to entrust it through a tender in which anyone can participate and therefore private entities, but also public entities ".
So, paradoxically, Atac could also participate?
“Yes, Atac could also participate, but after having recovered and completely restructured. Or Atac could become the Municipality agency that controls who wins the tender, the body that has the task of programming and controlling the service. Also for this reason it is a question of liberalization to all intents and purposes and not of privatisation.
We believe that what citizens should care about is the safeguarding of public functions. Public functions do not concern the ownership of the company, but the respect of what the service contract provides. Today this does not happen with Atac and I am sorry that all those who are concerned with privatization do not take into consideration the fact that a 100 percent public company writes in its industrial plan that it will not cover the number of kilometers it should to the service contract".
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As I asked you before, users are also concerned about the possible increase in the price of tickets…
“I'll say it right away: we want the price to be kept low and concessions to be provided for certain categories of citizens.
Given this, what few people know is that today the cost of traveling on buses, metros and trains is not one euro and fifty, i.e. it does not correspond only to the price of the ticket, but even reaches 6-7 euros per single race. This means that to the euro and fifty that we pay every time we buy a ticket we have to add another 5 which is equivalent to the part of the cost that is charged to general taxation through taxes. At the end of the year, for a service that doesn't work, each of us pays around 160 euros.
As far as we are concerned, even if the tender is won by a private company, the Municipality will still decide both the ticket price and the amount of public money to be paid. So it will still be the Municipality to choose the amount”.
Specifically, if Yes were to win, what would happen to Rome? What will the changes be?
“A very strong signal of discontinuity would arrive, a political signal launched from below, popular, with respect to a paralyzed and very fragile context such as that of the capital. The Raggi junta, which has now reached its mid-term, continues to blame the previous administrations for everything that is wrong with Rome. We are among those who have truly blamed previous administrations for the mismanagement and inability to govern this city. It is also true however that two and a half years after the election of this junta we should begin to see some positive effects, it should be clear that the administration has taken the right path which will lead to real reforms and instead what we see is only paralysis.
Returning to the merits of the question, if the Yes wins, there is a clear indication of the will of the citizens to reform the model of supply of the public transport service. I also want to underline that for us the real challenge is that of participation. We are quite confident that the Yes will win, the point is how many people will go to vote".
Speaking of turnout, is there a quorum or not?
“The quorum is another yellow because the Raggi junta managed to create confusion even on the rules, changing them in the running. For the uninitiated, last January, on the same day in which the referendum was called for the first date that the mayor had chosen, that of June (later postponed due to the elections in the Municipalities, ed.), the Statute of Roma Capitale was amended by eliminating the quorum from the referendum. So in our opinion there is no quorum because the new Statute applies. However, according to the interpretation given by the Municipality, this should be the last referendum in history with a quorum. After ours, the minimum threshold will no longer exist.
This thing makes many people smile, but in reality it represents only one of the many obstacles that have been placed on popular participation. Already at the time of the collection of the signatures, when we asked the mayor Raggi to delegate municipal officials for the authentication of the signatures, she replied to pay us the authenticators ourselves. So we did, supporting the cost with self-financing. After the referendum was called, the quorum chaos we just mentioned was created. To all this must be added the lack of information to citizens. Even today many do not know that Sunday we go to vote, those who know do not know where they can do it and so on".
Are you telling me that the City hasn't done enough to inform citizens?
“In this situation there is a responsibility of the Municipality, because the mayor has not behaved like a mayor who informs his citizens, regardless of how they think. Citizens can decide to vote Yes or No, but they must be well informed by the administration. They must know that there is a referendum on 11 November, that the object of this referendum is local public transport and that the questions concern the tendering of the service and its opening up to non-scheduled forms of collective public transport” .
This has not been done, in your opinion?
"The mayor behaved like an abstention committee, like the anti-referendum committees par excellence, those who want to derail a consultation by not informing people or saying not to go and vote".
However, Mayor Raggi did not officially express herself in favor of Yes or No…
“In reality, her position was clear from the beginning because when we were dealing with the collection of signatures, the mayor Raggi had expressed herself by saying 'the citizens have already voted for this referendum when they voted for me'. Statements that do not exactly represent the maximum expression and sentiment in the referendum, especially if made by those who remind us every day that they are in favor of direct democracy and citizen participation".
Let's go back to the predictions. In the event of a Yes victory and with a high turnout, could the Giunta ignore the result of this consultation? From a legislative point of view it can do it, given that it is a consultative referendum, but politically?
“Not in our opinion, it would be a very serious thing. It is clear that if the Yes wins, citizens expect a response from those who govern at the moment. Among other things, starting to prepare a tender like the one we want takes some time, so in the meantime the service would go on as it is, but at least the citizens will find themselves faced with a hope of improvement that today, given the Atac conditions , there is not".
Should national politics also take this into consideration? You spoke earlier about signals, would it be a signal for the highest levels too?
"Absolutely yes. We think this is a national match. It is a referendum that is at the center of national political interest, not only because it concerns the Capital, but because it raises an important issue, that of the relationship between the public and private sectors, at a time when we are faced with a Government which instead would like to renationalise everything. Alitalia can be just one of many examples of this will. What the government doesn't understand is that the question shouldn't be whether or not to nationalize companies. The point is the ability of the public to control and regulate economic sectors, not to directly carry out tasks. Also because when companies often and willingly carry them out they turn into patronage carts and it is always the citizens who lose out, both in terms of costs and quality of service”.
