Trieste in revolt: the Anac beheads the Port, but in this way Italy is ruined

It is not often that the workers themselves protect a manager, even protesting strongly against the decision to fire him. Yet this is what is happening in Trieste, where the Anac, the national anti-corruption authority, has decided that the appointment of Zeno D'Agostino as president of Porto must be revoked. A bolt from the blue that overwhelms one of the most esteemed personalities of the Julian city: appointed in 2016 by the then minister Graziano Delrio, D'Agostino had relaunched the Trieste seaport, consolidating it among the largest in Europe, with 62 million tons busy and the primacy of the first oil terminal in the Mediterranean and Italy's railways.

Furthermore, the president of the Port Authority had been the protagonist of the operation of the New Silk Road, which would have made Trieste a hub of commercial exchanges at an international level, connecting Italy to China but also to the rest of Europe through agreements with Hungary, Germany and the ports of Northern Europe, as well as attracting investments from half the planet, including Russia. However, the Anac does not want to hear reasons: for the anti-corruption D'Agostino is "guilty" of already being the president of the Trieste passenger terminal, a tourist and cruise company 40 percent held by the Port Authority. It doesn't matter if that office was actually a representation, carried out free of charge and without effective management powers.

For Anac, rules are rules, to the detriment of the excellent work of D'Agostino, recognized by the whole city and by the dockers themselves who are in turmoil in these hours (since he has been in office another 300 have been hired): they have blocked docks and containers, shouting "No one comes in or out here. We won't move an inch until D'Agostino becomes president again”. It's true: rules are rules, but we need to know how to distinguish form from substance with intelligence and foresight and above all to evaluate the effects that each action has. Otherwise justice is not done, but only own goals are scored that ruin Italy.

However, it may be that behind the shield of bureaucracy, there is something else. It is no coincidence that the Forza Italia group of Friuli Venezia Giulia, while showing human solidarity with D'Agostino, has criticized his overtures to China. The grillino minister of economic development, Patuanelli, who is from Trieste, instead said that he wants D'Agostino back at the helm of Porto again. We shall see, but it would be a crime to smash everything and sink Trieste, which lives on the Port.