by Alaric DeArment
We arrived back in Ragusa Sunday evening, exhausted from the nonstop traveling and speeches – having often given two or three in a single day. As I looked out the window of the San Giorgio, I saw that newspaper boxes for Il Corriere Stagnese, Le Notizie Quotidiane and I Tempi di Ragusa had been knocked over, with only piles of ashes remaining of their contents. Only those of La Gazzetta della Repubblica – whose reporting was notably favorable to Amadeo’s government – remained intact.
Despite having to work on the weekend, we still had to show up to work the next day.
“When we are gone, a group called the League for an Honest Press knocked over the newspaper boxes, and the owners and editors all got threats of death,” Amadeo announced as he stood up at the table.
He looked serious, and I hoped he would denounce the actions.
“While of course we hope for peace, what is important is that it means the boycott is successful, and the people are on our side,” he proclaimed instead, slapping the table and smiling.
The other ministers murmured in approval.
“We are bringing my grandfather Enzo’s vision to life!”
The other ministers all knocked on the table in applause.
“The judge in the libel suits promises he will rule in our favor,” Ginevra raised her voice amid the applause. “Between that and the boycotts, the owners will have no choice but to sell to members of our family. Then they can hire new editors and reporters.”
Several of the others, including the justice minister, chuckled when I raised a question about judicial independence, but Amadeo told me it was something he would implement around the same time that Signoria elections took place.
“When do you plan to schedule the elections?” I asked, raising my hand. “In a week? A month? A year?”
“Very soon,” he nodded before signaling that it was time to discuss other business.
Only three days later, the judge in the libel suit did indeed rule in our government’s favor, without even a trial taking place. Several business leaders had snapped up the newspapers at bargain basement prices, firing the editors and reporters and hiring new ones – many apparently members of the League for an Honest Press who had no journalism experience, but whose coverage of the government rarely deviated from what the press releases said.
It occurred to me that to date, Amadeo had not experienced one failure as leader. Everything he did – the coup, the speeches, the policies and now the libel suit – were all resounding successes, like a gambler in Las Vegas who won the jackpot with every pull of the lever.
After about a month, I began noticing changes around the city. The poverty and dilapidation that greeted me the first time I saw Ragusa had disappeared, replaced with clean and orderly streets. Many of the storefronts were still empty, but they had for rent signs, and at any rate the neighborhoods around them now looked far more inviting. But the people who had lived there – particularly the homeless and the street kids – were mostly gone, and even many of the apartments above were unoccupied.
“What happened to the people who were living in the city?” I casually asked Amadeo between sips of coffee at breakfast as he read a now friendlier Le Notizie Quotidiane.
He hesitated for a moment before looking up at me and muttering that he had resettled them as part of the recent public housing and job training project outside Trappano.
He wasn’t his usual self, and it seemed like the work of being Rector had begun to take a toll on Amadeo, as I began seeing more empty vials used to store the black pellets piling up in the garbage.
I nodded, as if to suggest I knew of this project that until now I had heard nothing about, as he looked back down at the paper. While I had gotten better at reading Italian and Dalmatian, I still struggled with speaking and listening comprehension, so perhaps it had been discussed, but I did not understand it.
Up until now, my role as Minister without Portfolio had been ill-defined, but it was decided that I would be in charge of writing white papers and press releases in English for an international audience. To that end, I got access to the government’s records.
I decided to put together a proposal for a campaign promoting the infrastructure development programs, led by the housing project, as living people out of poverty was something worth promoting, along with democratization, which Amadeo seemed open to.
I combed through files in the records department, but I couldn’t find anything about the infrastructure programs, let alone the housing developments – no budget records, invoices for building materials, workers hired or anything.
Only an order for buses and trains to transport people living in the poorer parts of Ragusa to an abandoned village outside Trappano.
