in the meanwhile the newspapers and television broadcasters begin to take an interest in the strange goings on in this part of Italy television crews with reporters show up but they are greeted with a complete blackout that is once they get to town and start speaking with people no matter who they talk to no matter what they ask about the clans or even just about living conditions in town they all receive the same identical answer which is there are no clans here we’re a normal southern Italian town with certain problems that we are trying to solve we’re trying to emerge from our age-old poverty and this is what they all say from the young barista to the town hall employee and of course the mayor says it too even though he is one of the clan leaders and that was exactly when Ernesto Bardellino was planning to make the great leap forward once his brother Antonio had successfully made the leap to the international stage and had even moved to Santo Domingo now his brother Ernesto was trying to make the great leap forward but through politics Ernesto is convinced that he is a great politician he is convinced that he is a person worthy of representing our region in the Italian parliament he’s a member in good standing of the Italian Socialist Party and one day he decides to announce as a candidate for parliament

that was one of those occasions when the national mass media focused its attention on our town it all began with an article by a journalist from Il Mattino who launches into a full fledged diatribe against the Bardellino family first and foremost because they are family of underworld criminals a family guilty of the crimes it has committed and with specific reference to Ernesto Bardellino the writer expressed his astonishment at the idea that this person could have the unmitigated gall to even think of announcing for parliament considering as well that in his time as mayor he had done nothing to improve conditions in his town where there is nothing no libraries no movie theaters well there are two movie houses one across from the other on the main street but they both show nothing but pornography and then there’s another movie house a little farther up the same street and it shows porn flicks too there is no social venue no place where young people can go and spend time in the evenings and this article was picked up by other newspapers and it was discussed on local television stations and then it became a national Italian scandal people talked about it brought us to the attention finally of the police and the magistrature people expressed astonishment at the idea that a clan boss could hope to become a member of the parliament of the Italian republic