In a few months we will be called to elect the new Regional Council, the political and administrative body of our region. Nothing, in liberal democracies, is more important than asking us voters who we want to be led and governed by in the coming years. We voters would like to express a vote not only for a candidate or for the coalition in which he presents himself, but above all for a project that has a long term, possibly shared in its implementation. But we cannot help but look at the world around us because we have to deal with it.

The world is dividing into two parts. On the one hand all the liberal democracies and on the other the regimes in which the citizens do not decide who should govern them, but above all the freedom of thought, association and enterprise are suffocated while free critical thought and opinion are punished severely. So our future essentially depends on our ability to build it. We need to start again, not from the candidates' promises, but from the objectives we want to support and achieve. We could call them structural around which to create development, participation and well-being.

The basis for the development of our society must be based above all on four essential points: environment, birth rate, school dropouts, healthcare. And still the future and hope. Environment: our region with 24 thousand km² and 68 inhabitants/km² has an income of around 20 thousand euros which is less than half that of the richest regions. Precisely these conditions can be a key to development. In fact, there is no point in complaining about the 56,000 hectares reduced to polluting landfills. Fortunately they are only 2.5% of our territory. 560 km2. We must aim to make most of our territory, the remaining 97.5% productive, rich. We would need a thriving agri-food industry. If we overcome parasitic income and envy we can do it.

But be careful, we must not forget the data relating to deaths caused by air pollution. In Italy there is a figure of 40.8 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, well above the OECD average of 28.9. In the Cagliari agglomeration, the emission load is quite high for most pollutants, but there is a lack of vision that limits the continuous flow of cars. But how can we change our society if we don't want to have more children and dropping out of school unfortunately expresses the lack of an idea of the future? And then healthcare, the mother of all the electoral victories of the last 20 years and a harbinger of consensus in the name of the promised change. The cry of suffering of the citizens who made their voices heard from every corner of our region remained unheard. The privatization of healthcare is now a fait accompli. But the quality of hospitals has not improved.

Can a small region like ours aim for better healthcare and hospitals given that we spend more than 40% of the regional budget? Let's look at the Marche region: almost the same number of inhabitants, same average income. From Agenas in its annual "outcomes" report which evaluates the quality of some clinical objectives of hospitals, we learned that among the 18 best Italian hospitals one is from the Marche region. To take the words of a great and young president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, we too must imagine our future, but shaping it with our rational hopes and not with chatter which is often empty words.

Antonio Barracca

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