«Stop further delays. We need a timely return to elections in the Provinces”: with a ruling of just a few lines the Constitutional Court has thrown the Region into a regulatory labyrinth from which it will be difficult to escape without complicated decisions for the government and the centre-right majority.
In a nutshell, for the Council the elections in the former Provinces can no longer be postponed. Without going into the merits of the type of elections (those with universal suffrage or those in which only mayors and local councilors vote) the constitutional judges found that the Region has postponed the opening of the polls 18 times from 2015 to today. Condemning the former Provinces, now replaced by Free Consortia, to commissioner management “incompatible with their nature as autonomous and constitutionally necessary territorial bodies”.
The matter is very complicated from a political point of view and now also from a legal point of view. Because it must be said that the Council expressed its opinion on a law from last year, the one which provided for the seventeenth postponement of the elections. Declaring it, in fact, unconstitutional despite it being an outdated law. The problem is that on Tuesday night the ARS approved an identical law, which postpones the vote for the eighteenth time. A rule which, clearly, goes towards the new censorship of the Council.
Even the big names in the majority predict it. For the MEP Marco Falcone, a critical voice within Forza Italia, «this regulatory ballet is not serving the interests of the Sicilians who, instead, are asking us to get the Provinces back on their feet so that they can go back to dealing with provincial roads, schools, welfare ». It is an appeal to put aside “palace games” and immediately call second level elections, regularizing the management of the Free Consortia. But it is also a proposal that clashes with the divisions that emerged in the majority a month ago, when President Schifani had called electoral rallies for December 15 and the parties had not reached agreements on the candidatures. Hence the solution of postponing everything for at least six months, in the ill-concealed hope that in the meantime the ARS will approve the reform that will reintroduce direct elections, eliminating forever the possibility of second level elections.
The problem is that now there is a clear indication from the Council and a law just approved which goes in the opposite direction and which provides for elections no earlier than April. The secretary of the Democratic Party, Anthony Barbagallo, suggested a solution to the government: «Schifani does not publish the shameful law which provides for yet another postponement of the vote of the former Provinces and respects the ruling of the Council. Otherwise it would give rise to attitudes of a subversive and evasive nature of the predominant role of the powers of the State”. The implication is that at that point we should return to plan A: the second level elections on 15 December.
However, the intention of Palazzo d’Orleans seems to be to publish the law and postpone the elections. The councilor for Local Authorities, Andrea Messina, puts two other alternatives on the table: «If we immediately approve the reform that reintroduces direct elections at the Ars, the prerequisite for the just approved law which provides for the postponement of the elections of second level”. But Messina knows, like everyone in the majority, that there is no agreement on this even among the centre-right parties, as demonstrated by the slip-ups in the chamber over the last year, the result of the trips of the snipers. And then the alternative could be to «call the second level elections immediately, that is, set the date in April so as to be ready to respond to the objections of the Council. And in the meantime work to approve the reform that brings us back to direct elections.” In any case, it is a matter for jurists and the majority’s pontificators.
