There are 18 candidates in the administrative elections on Sunday considered “unpresentable” by the Anti-Mafia Commission, according to the self-regulation code of parties and the Severino law. A list completed a few hours after electoral silence, the result of the Commission’s scrutiny, with the help of the National Anti-Mafia Directorate, prosecutors and courts. And just as the last checks were being carried out in Rome, news arrived from Palermo of the arrest of another candidate, Francesco Lombardo of the Brothers of Italy. In any case, he would have been “very presentable”, underlined the president of the Anti-Mafia Commission, Nicola Morra.
Unpresentable in Palermo, 3 of the center-right and one of the Democratic Party
Instead, there are four candidates in Palermo in the “black list”, three for the center-right and one for the Democratic Party, Totò Lentini, Giuseppe Milazzo, Francesco La Mantia, and Giuseppe Lupo. Many are in other capitals, and not only in the South: also in Piacenza, Verona and Gorizia. A candidate for mayor, Mauro Vicano, from a civic list, was also identified as unpresentable in Frosinone.
The disputed crimes
Extortion, money laundering, corruption, extortion are some of the crimes charged against unpresentable candidates, the number of which is exactly double compared to the previous election last autumn, but there are also many more candidates screened 19,782 (they were 12 thousand last time) in 57 municipal councils, 4 regional capitals (Genoa, L’Aquila, Catanzaro and Palermo) and 22 provincial capitals in 14 regions.
Palermo, voting campaign ends with arrests and poisons
In the meantime, the electoral campaign in Palermo ended with two arrests for political-mafia electoral exchange, marked from the beginning by the harsh controversies for the commitment of the condemned for the mafia Marcello Dell’Utri and Totò Cuffaro in support of Roberto Lagalla (center-right) . Once again, the handcuffs went off for a center-right candidate. After Pietro Polizzi (Forza Italia), Francesco Lombardo, candidate on the Brothers of Italy list, was arrested; both, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, sought the votes of the Mafia bosses, intercepted while talking with the two politicians at the end of May. And so Roberto Lagalla, candidate of the center-right, had to parry the blows by warning the parties that support him: “If from the Antimafia investigation some unpresentable emerge, the parties will have to make them resign, otherwise I will resign”.