The Regional Administrative Court rejected the appeal presented by the former mayor Giovanni Politano against the election of the current municipal council in the session of 25 and 26 May. The TAR obtained this yesterday and therefore confirms the outcome of the electoral competition. Politano was also sentenced to pay the costs. In addition to the Municipality of Paola (defended by the lawyer Rosaio Maria Infantino), the Ministry of the Interior and the Prefecture of Cosenza also appeared in court. In its reasons, the TAR Jha clarified that the reference data for determining the number of the population for electoral purposes is the census and therefore not the registry data. Based on this assumption, Paola has a population of less than 15 thousand inhabitants. Therefore the appeal is “clearly unfounded”.
Politano – represented by the lawyers Enrico Lubrano and Giuseppe Cavallaro essentially challenged the minutes of the meeting of the presidents for “the elections of the mayor and the municipal councils for municipalities of up to 15 thousand inhabitants” drawn up on 27 May 2025. With these minutes the proclamation of the elected representatives was in fact arranged. From the minutes it can be deduced that the incumbent mayor Roberto Perrotta was elected in a single electoral round following the voting and was the candidate who obtained the highest number of valid votes without a run-off since, according to the appeal: “the weighting rule of article 71 of the Tuel relating to elections with municipalities of up to 15 thousand inhabitants was erroneously applied instead of the rule of article 72 of the same Tuel relating to competition for municipalities exceeding 15 thousand inhabitants which provides for a run-off between the two candidates mayor who obtained the highest number of preferences, except in the case in which one of them reaches the threshold of 50% of the preferences already in the first round. Theses, however, were denied by the TAR.
According to Politano, the entire electoral competition would have been carried out with the wrong method as “the electoral offices of the Municipality of Paola have mistakenly considered the Municipality of Paola as having a population of less than 15 thousand inhabitants”. There were four acts challenged by the appellant. First of all, those for the election of the mayor and city councilors, then as a precaution also the provision of the prefecture of Cosenza (which indicates the population as 14,827 according to the last official census of 2021) since the data – again according to the appeal – would only be indicative for the calculation of the number of city councilors and finally the Ministry’s act which indicates the number of inhabitants as 14,827. The last possible route for Politano could be to appeal to the Council of State.