Sophisticated bomb attacks that killed two leading Italian anticrime prosecutors sent down from Rome outraged public opinion. In 1993 Mr. Orlando was elected mayor on an anti-Mafia platform that he has kept blazingly alive. He returned life to normal with concerts, soccer games - and the opera. Its reopening in 1998 had a tonic, almost triumphal effect. Prying loose the Mafia's grip on municipal institutions went ahead bit by bit.
Schools are one example.
The godfathers used their influence to block the construction of new school buildings. They arranged instead that classrooms be rented for appropriate sums in private houses that, of course, were Mafia-owned. This fraud led to a chronic shortage of schoolrooms with the inevitable depressing effect on pupils' performance. Not until 1995 was the practice stopped once and for all with a program of renovation and building new schools. As a foundation for such sweeping social and cultural change, Orlando and his administration have put Palermo's fiscal house in order.