A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI, #181: SARDINIA TO VOTE (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

On February 24th we will vote in Sardinia and there is a lot of talk 
about candidacies, but little is known and little is said about the 
problems of the island and the programs that the various political 
forces are proposing. Rather than being divided on the investigations 
concerning the outgoing governor Solinas, who seems to have thought more 
about his own affairs than those of the island and who has stood out for 
his decidedly unsuccessful management of COVID and has left the island 
largely defenseless - perhaps due to the his well-known anti-vax 
sympathies - it would be appropriate to address the real problems of a 
region with a special statute which preserves a deep crisis in its 
economy and a rapid march towards depopulation.
On the island, the relative poverty index went from 13.9% in 2020 to 
16.1%, 2.2% more in the following year.
Around 110 thousand Sardinian families are in great difficulty. This is 
certified by the data from the 17th Report on poverty and social 
exclusion in Sardinia drawn up by the regional Caritas delegation. The 
legal population of the island, reported as of December 31, 2021, 
amounts to 1,587,413 residents and has decreased by 3.2% compared to 
2011; with the exception of the metropolitan city of Cagliari, where 
there was a slight increase (+0.2%), all the other provinces suffered 
significant decreases. Oristano is the most affected province with a 7% 
decrease. Compared to 2020, the census data show a decrease of 2,631 
people in the region. At the provincial level, Nuoro loses 1,141 
residents and also records the largest relative decrease (-0.6%), while 
in Cagliari and Sassari the population remains stable. The average age 
of the population is 46.8 years compared to 45.2 in Italy. The 
comparison with the 2011 Census data highlights a progressive aging of 
the population, at a rate higher than the national average. All age 
groups under 45 see their relative weight decrease compared to 2011 
(ISTAT 2022 Census data).
In 2021, 53.6% of people in Sardinia were employed. Female employment 
stands at around 46.3%; the data relating to male employment also 
improves (60.7% in 2021 compared to 59.0% in 2020). The trend of 
employed people in services is decreasing, while it is increasing in the 
industrial sector. The increased female employment after the end of 
Covid is concentrated in the services and tourism sectors with the 
resumption of tourist flows to the island. If we look at the employment 
sectors that characterize the labor market and the productive structure 
of the island, we note that the economy of Sardinia is mainly based on 
the tertiary sector, although a role of a certain importance is played 
by both the mining and industrial sectors from the agro-pastoral sector 
and above all from tourism.

The Region and the Sardinian economy

Despite being a region with a special statute, Sardinia has not managed 
to use the powers at its disposal to provide the island with an 
infrastructure network essential to its development. Communications are 
extremely poor and the island is traversable from north to south with 
difficulty. The road system does not allow rapid connections between the 
5 provinces and leaves many areas of the island isolated. Greater 
liveliness is recorded during the summer season when tourism pours onto 
the island thousands of temporary residents who occupy the structures 
built on the island's coasts, many of which are high class, to the point 
that the nightlife and the presence of a wealthy clientele. It is no 
coincidence that the development in employment that we were reporting 
concerns that of women and is mainly directed towards hotel and tourism 
support services.
Tourist development has taken the place of mining which was historically 
the prevalent activity on the island which has the highest number of 
mineral deposits in the country. However, mining activities on the 
island have decreased over time because the mines have become 
progressively less competitive and productive, but also due to the lack 
of investments that would renew the extraction technologies. The result 
is the progressive and irreversible crisis in the island's mining park 
with now historic crisis areas such as that of Iglesiente and Porto 
Torres where some of the industrial activities survive in fatigue and 
uncertainty.

The agri-food activity represents another of the island's strong points, 
with mainly sheep breeding. The island's dairy products have struggled 
to maintain a positive placement relationship on the market, but here 
too there is a lack of infrastructure networks and investments to allow 
a more effective and competitive placement of the product on the market. 
Fishing presents the same problems, although it constitutes one of the 
activities that could allow, even by using fish cultivation areas, a 
more modern production activity and a position on the fish market 
provided that effective and fast communication networks are created, 
which are totally lacking.
Due to the general crisis involving air and maritime transport, 
connections with the island have in fact entered into crisis and even in 
this sector there have been no significant investments and convincing 
interventions by the Region aimed at addressing and resolving this 
serious problem which leaves the island abandoned to itself and sees a 
revival of communication, albeit partial and difficult, only in the 
summer months with the development of the tourist flow.
Careful and responsible management of the regional structure should be 
distinguished by the adoption of an investment plan. The outgoing 
council was extremely poor in proposing and planning investments, taking 
advantage of the PNRR opportunity and now the island will have to face 
its problems in a situation of lack of availability of capital on the 
financial and investment market.
On a political level, the right-wing management of the island's 
government proved to be a failure, also because it occurred by 
distorting the role of an important political force in the history of 
the island, that of the Action Party, a socialist-oriented party founded 
by Lussu , which saw its political approach totally changed with the 
transition on the right-wing front, which handed the island over to this 
political party.
The possible relaunch of the economic development of the island can only 
pass through a renewal of the government's political lines and greater 
participation and involvement of the island's populations in the 
management of choices and in social development, which necessarily 
passes through a review of the positions to be undertaken with respect 
to tourist investments on the island, to protect the environment and for 
the adoption of sustainable development which favors the protection of 
the landscape and the environment and at the same time allows the 
development of a more widespread distribution of the tourist flow which 
involves the internal territories of the island both by rediscovering an 
often uncontaminated landscape and environment, but also by creating the 
infrastructures that connect the interior of the island to its coasts, 
in order to allow widespread and differentiated use of the resources 
offered by the territory . Sardinia also has something to offer the 
tourist healthy and genuine nutrition and a high quality of life.
These are widespread aspirations among the population of which, however, 
no trace is found in the party programmes, which suggests that the rate 
of abstention from the electorate, even on this occasion, will only 
grow, proof of which is that in the last elections one in two Sardinian 
voters chose not to vote. In fact, the turnout stopped at 52.5 percent: 
thirteen percentage points less than in the 2018 elections. Voters from 
the big cities did not vote, but not even those from smaller towns where 
door-to-door and direct relationship with candidates. The gap, compared 
to the national figure which for the island is close to eleven 
percentage points (third from last in the national ranking). Voter 
participation is also affected by a cumbersome electoral system (with 
the impossibility of expressing preferences) which increases the gap 
between voters and parties, seen as too distant from the people and 
increasingly self-referential

G.L.

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/01/23/sardegna-al-voto/
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