The Constitutional Court rejects Puglia's anti-mayor law: "Unreasonable and disproportionate."
"Unreasonable, disproportionate, and infringing on the right to stand for election." This is how the Constitutional Court struck down Puglia's anti-mayor law. "On behalf of all Puglia's mayors, I welcome with enthusiasm and satisfaction this ruling, which fully supports our position, both legally and substantively," commented Fiorenza Pascazio, regional president of the National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI).
The Apulian law, nicknamed "anti-mayor," required mayors who intended to run for regional elections to resign 180 days before the end of their term. The Court held that this provision "violated Articles 3 and 51 of the Constitution."
The Court noted that the disproportionate nature of the provision stems primarily from the fact that the deadline established by the regional legislature is significantly earlier than the date set for the submission of candidacies, while other regional laws provide for much shorter deadlines. The disproportionate nature of the provision also stems from the fact that it applies without distinction to all mayors, while other regional laws limit ineligibility to mayors of municipalities with populations exceeding certain thresholds.
"The regional council's rule, as established by the court, is, as we have always maintained, unreasonable. It violates the principle of equality," Pascazio reflects. "And it demonstrates that the attempt made by the regional councilors in December, in those ways, was a crude way to safeguard their position. Until the very end, we tried to convince them to reconsider their decision. But we received only very general responses. Only the Court could have remedied such a serious violation of the principle of equality."
Vito Leccese, mayor of Bari, also spoke out: " Hands off the mayors. We said it the minute after the amendment was approved, which was nothing more than a desperate attempt to effectively prevent local administrators from competing on equal terms in regional elections, and the Constitutional Court reiterated it today, putting a tombstone on this disgraceful institutional chapter," said Leccese, the promoter of a series of initiatives against the law. "Several months have passed since the amendment was approved, and voices have been raised from many quarters to denounce the unconstitutionality of this law, as it infringes on the rights of mayors, just like Italian citizens, to whom Article 51 of the Constitution recognizes full freedom of access to public offices and elected positions under conditions of equality and based solely on legal requirements. But in this time, the Regional Council has found neither the will nor the majority to repeal it. Today, the Constitutional Court has taken action, effectively declaring the failure of this attempt, rather than the lack of a majority. clumsy, to alter the game by eliminating by law the potentially most inconvenient opponents, those closest to the communities of voters".
La Repubblica
