>>>ANSA/Farm minister slammed for 'personal use of train'

(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 22 - Farm Minister Francesco Lollobrigida has been slammed for allegedly using a high-speed train for his personal needs.
    Il Fatto Quotidiano daily published the story on its front page Wednesday saying that the minister, who was travelling from Rome to crime-ridden Naples backwater Caivano, had got on the Turin-Salerno Frecciarossa at Termini but then made it make a special stop at Ciampino because it was 111 minutes late, in order to continue on his way by car.
    Former premier and centrist Italia Viva (IV) party leader Matteo Renzi and the leftwing populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) were among those calling for Lollobrigida to quit over the alleged personal use of public transport, while many critics compared his behaviour to the Marchese del Grillo, an iconic Alberto Sordi comic aristocratic character known for his high-handed dismissal of common mortals.
    M5S leader and former premier Giuseppe Conte said Lollobrigida's conduct "sends a devastating signal" while the M5S deputy House whip, Agostino Santillo, said "someone who stops a train as if it was his own property must resign".
    Green leader Angelo Bonelli said it must be established if Lollobrigida committed abuse of office while Più Europa (More Europe) leader Riccardo Magi said "if it's true that Lollobrigida got a train to stop for his own convenience then he must explain himself in parliament".
    The leader of the biggest opposition party, Elly Schlein of the centre-left Democratic Pary (PD), said "not everyone can afford the luxury of getting a train to stop," adding "I find Lollobrigida's behaviour arrogant and indecent," and saying that the PD had filed a parliamentary question on the incident.
    But the minister's rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party said that the flak directed at him was "disgraceful" and "unacceptable" and said he had only made sure he could get to an important event like the opening of a park in Caivano, which the government is trying to clean up after the July youth gang rape of two young cousins, "without in any way provoking any damage to the other passengers".
    This was confirmed by rail company Trenitalia which said passengers had not been negatively impacted by the incident.
    "The stop at Ciampino did not cause any further delays for travellers, nor repercussions on traffic, nor additional costs for the company", stated the rail company.
    "The train stopped shortly after Roma Termini because of what was happening on the line and the diversion via Cassino was also decided in view of the stop already planned at Naples Afragola," Trenitalia went on.
    "After the restart, the train stopped at Ciampino station, where the institutional figures on board got off, in order to meet institutional commitments," Trenitalia explained.
    Lollobrigida himself said the unscheduled stop had been open to all the passengers aboard and not just him.
    "The train stopped at Ciampino, where an extraordinary stop was made available for everyone to disembark, as per the announcement made on the train, and not just for me as some have reported", he said.
    He added that Trenitalia had already made it clear that "the Ciampino stop did not entail any additional disruption or costs of any kind, nor any risk or further delay for anyone." He reiterated that "it was an extraordinary stop that, when extraordinary cases occur, Trenitalia usually makes and that was announced and available to all passengers." Il Marchese del Grillo ("The Marquess Del Grillo", internationally released as The Marquis of Grillo) is a 1981 comedy directed by the great Mario Monicelli, starring great comic actor Sordi as the title character.
    The film depicts very early nineteenth-century episodes in the life of a nobleman in Rome amid the Napoleonic occupation.
    Loosely based on folklore accounts of the real Onofrio del Grillo (who lived in the eighteenth century), the character plays a number of pranks, one even involving Pope Pius VII, and memorably swaps lives with a drunken coal seller who is his spitting image.
    The film's most famous line 'Io sò io, e voi non siete un cazzo' (literally "I am who I am, and you are fucking nobody"), is appropriated from great Roman dialect poet Gioachino Belli's 1831 sonnet, "The Sovrans of the Old World". (ANSA).