Fifty polling stations open late in Sicilian capital, tarnishing appointment with polling stations convened in nearly 1,000 municipalities in Italy
The chaos in Palermo, where fifty polling stations opened up to eight hours late because their table chairmen had not appeared, marked the municipal elections held this Sunday in nearly 1,000 municipalities in Italy.
About nine million people were called to the polls at this election event, the results of which will not be known until next Monday, when the count starts at 2 p.m., as preference is given to the recount of the referendum votes on judicial reform. which is celebrated simultaneously across the country. The consultation seemed doomed to fail, as at 7pm, when there were only four hours left before polling stations closed, only 11.45% had voted, a figure far from the minimum 50% required. to reach a quorum.
“Even in the fourth world, that doesn’t happen. It is serious for the municipal elections and for the referendum. It is something that is not seen even in the election of the community president. They steal the votes of thousands of people. With these words, League leader Matteo Salvini responded to what happened in Palermo, where chaos was expected due to the previous day’s difficulties forming the polling stations.
Although Salvini and other politicians asked for polling stations to open until Monday morning, the Interior Ministry made only a minimal concession: voters who were in polling stations by 11 p.m. could vote, even if bureaucratic procedures delayed the election. originally scheduled closing time.
“This morning I had wanted to exercise my right to vote, but that was not possible, because when I arrived at the electoral headquarters, they told me that the table that corresponded to me was closed because the president was missing. So I went to work. I have been denied my right to vote and I consider it very serious,” Sicilian Paola Maranzano denounced in statements to the Adnkronos agency. This situation caused the absent presidents to be charged before the judicial authorities, as the law only allows them not to appear for “serious reasons”.
Despite the voices assuring that this chaos could invalidate the election results, the experts assured that this was not the case. “There is a shortening of the voting time, but this does not justify the request for annulment. The delay does not mean invalidity. Also, the opening of the electoral office cannot be extended, because this requires a law on purpose’, explains Guido Corso, emeritus professor of administrative law at Roma 3 University.
The delay in the opening of polling stations in Palermo comes after the city, one of the four regional capitals at stake in the municipal along with Genoa, L’Aquila and Catanzaro, also played a key role in the election campaign due to the arrest a few years ago of two candidates for councilor on the conservative list of candidate Roberto Lagalla. They are accused of soliciting the electoral support of Mafia bosses from clans of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia.
In a phone call intercepted by police, one of those arrested, named Pietro Polizzi, and a member of Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi’s party, told a mob boss: “If I’m powerful, you are powerful too.” Berlusconi was highly critical of these arrests, seeing them as an attempt to harm the interests of his political power: “They could have been arrested two days after the election. This is always the story of politicized justice, which has not died.
Source: La Verdad
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