Protesters from southern Italy took to the streets of Rome on Tuesday to demand that the government push ahead with plans to build a bridge
linking Sicily to the Italian mainland.
An estimated 1,000 people from Sicily, Calabria and Sardinia converged on the capital to show their support for the project, which if completed would result in the longest suspension bridge in the world. The protesters marched through the centre of Rome in a noisy, colourful procession, stopping beneath government offices where they set up a row of small inflatable bridges.
One group of demonstrators staged a mock funeral with two coffins designed to represent the 'death' of the bridge and the future of Sicily.
Others held up banners bearing slogans such as 'a bridge for the south','no government can go against the people', and 'roads, railways and bridges to connect Sicily to Europe'. A large number of centre-right opposition politicians took part in the demo, including Sicily's regional government
chief Salvatore Cuffaro, former foreign minister Gianfranco Fini and former agriculture minister Gianni Alemanno, as well as dozens of southern mayors.
Organisers of the protest argued that the bridge was an essential infrastructure project which would boost the depressed Sicilian economy and provide jobs for some 40,000 people a year. "The bridge will provide Sicily with a link to Europe, as well as the rest of Italy," organisers said.
Plans for the bridge across the Strait of Messina - a narrow strip of water between the eastern tip of Sicily and the southern tip of mainland Italy - have been put on hold since the centre left came to power in the April elections. Premier Romano Prodi has said the project will not get
off the ground in the foreseeable future with ministers citing budgetary reasons and other infrastructure works seen as more important.
But Fini, who heads the rightist National Alliance (AN), said during Tuesday's protest that "nobody can doubt the strategic importance of this project which would give Sicily a new image and provide employment".
"The government should listen to the will of the people and Sicilians want this bridge," he said. Alemanno, another AN heavyweight, called for a
referendum in Sicily on the bridge. "Sicilians have the right to this important infrastructure work which has already been approved by the
European Union," he said.
But Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio blasted the project as a "pointless white elephant".
"Railways, decent roads and sustainable urban transport are far more important... Sicily and Calabria need aqueducts, train lines and highways, not mad dreams," said the minister, who heads Italy's Green party. The bridge idea has always been controversial and there have been several demonstrations against it, including one in Sicily in 2004 which drew some 10,000 people.
Environmentalists are fiercely opposed while other critics argue that it would be unsafe in an earthquake-prone area and would waste billions of euros. Some fear Mafia involvement, saying that crime clans would be able to obtain lucrative building contracts by intimidating competitors and bribing local officials.
Its future was immediately called into doubt at the Prodi government's swearing-in ceremony, when Transport Minister Alessandro Bianchi called the bridge "the most useless and damaging project in Italy in the last 100 years". Prodi spoke of other priorities like completing a motorway to Palermo, improving water services and boosting rail links.
But the pro-bridge lobby argues that the project will give southern development a crucial lift and finally make Italy one nation by connecting Sicily to the rest of the country. It also stresses that the bridge would showcase Italian engineering prowess.
The Messina bridge was the biggest public works project championed by former premier Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government.
If completed, the 3,690-metre-long bridge would be able to handle 4,500 cars an hour and 200 trains a day and would cut the two-hour journey time by ferry. Work on the 4.6-billion-euro bridge was scheduled to start later this year and end in 2012. A group led by Italian engineering group Impregilo won the bidding last year to become the project's general contractor.
