Rosario Crocetta

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Rosario Crocetta, 2012

Rosario Crocetta (born February 8, 1951 in Gela , Caltanissetta province ) is an Italian politician. From October 2012 to November 2017 he was the regional president of Sicily . Before that, he was Mayor of the southern Sicilian coastal town of Gela from 2003-09 and Member of the European Parliament from 2009-12 . The openly homosexual politician professes Catholicism .

Live and act

Rosario Crocetta is the younger brother of former Communist Senator Salvatore Crocetta. He initially worked for the oil company Eni and wrote articles for the left-wing newspapers L'Unità , Il manifesto and Liberazione . In 1987 he published his first book, Diario di una giostra ("Diary of a Carousel").

Crocetta joined the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) and after its split in 1991 belonged to the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC). From 1996 to 1998 he was cultural officer in his Sicilian hometown of Gela. In 1998 he moved to the Federazione dei Verdi (Greens) and was elected to the local council. In 2000 he joined the Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (PdCI).

After the mayoral election in Gela in 2003, Crocetta's Christian Democratic opponent seemed elected with a majority of 107 votes. Election fraud was found; 500 votes had been illegally declared invalid. Then Crocetta was mayor of the city, which until a few years ago was one of the strongholds of the Mafia . Crocetta, who faced death threats after the election, significantly tightened the measures against the mafia, so that Gela is now considered the city with the strictest anti-mafia regulations. Since then, the contracting construction companies have been liable for compliance with the regulations by subcontractors . Job rotation was introduced at the Gelas building authority . At his request a new building for the administration of justice was built.

A planned murder plot against Crocetta in December 2003 was prevented by eavesdropping on phone calls. An assassin from Lithuania was arrested and deported because he did not have a residence permit. In 2005, Crocetta succeeded in having the leadership of the Gela Calcio football club removed even before its president was arrested for extortion , drug trafficking and supporting a godfather in hiding. Surveillance cameras were installed in public places. In the 2007 local elections, Crocetta was re-elected with 64.8% of the vote in the first ballot. In October 2008 he joined the center-left rallying party Partito Democratico.

In the 2009 European elections , Crocetta was elected to the European Parliament to represent the constituency of the Italian Islands . There he joined the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Social Democrats (S&D), became a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and the delegation for relations with the Mashreq countries. The Belgian security authorities responsible for Brussels saw no reason to put him under police protection, while in Italy he was one of the 20 most vulnerable people and Crocetta himself assumed that he was "sentenced to death by the Cosa Nostra". Without a Belgian police escort, even the Italian Interior Ministry found it too dangerous to send a personal security officer from Italy for Crocetta. Crocetta was therefore unable to attend the meetings of the EU Parliament. In this context he accused Europe of inaction against the Europe-wide mafia and underestimating the mafia problem. From December 2011 until he left the European Parliament a year later, he was a member of the Committee on Budgetary Control . In April 2012, Crocetta was elected Vice-Chair of the Special Committee against Organized Crime, Corruption and Money Laundering.

As a candidate for the PD, the Christian Democratic Unione di Centro and his own list Il Megafono , Crocetta won the regional elections in Sicily in October 2012 with 30.5% of the vote. He became President of the Region of Sicily as the successor to Raffaele Lombardo . Crocetta no longer ran for the 2017 regional election.

Trivia

Crocetta has symbolically adopted a child called Mabrouk ( Congratulations ). It is the child of a Somali mother who had saved herself as a boat refugee on the beach of Gela.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Alexander Smoltczyk : The Antipate. In: Der Spiegel , No. 17/2006, p. 130.
  2. ^ Christoph B. Schiltz: Defenseless in Brussels. In: Die Welt , October 2, 2009.
  3. ↑ Crocetta: Europe tolerates the Mafia next to it , Euronews, November 23, 2009.
  4. ^ Entry on Rosario Crocetta in the European Parliament 's database of deputies
  5. ↑ Dominik Straub: Rosario Crocetta “Now the Mafia can pack up”. In: Der Tagesspiegel , October 31, 2012.
predecessor Office successor
Raffaele Lombardo President of Sicily
October 2012 - November 2017 		Sebastiano Musumeci
personal data
SURNAME Crocetta, Rosario
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian politician, Mayor of Gela, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Gela