Outgoing Rome Mayor Ignazio
Marino said Sunday he "would not disappoint" supporters who have
called for him to withdraw his resignation over an expenses row
when the legal term for him to do so expires on November 2.
"I will not disappoint you," Marino told about 2,000
cheering supporters at Rome's Campidoglio (Capitol), quoting Che
Guevara's saying "We are realists, we want the impossible".
Marino said he will try to muster support on the city
council to keep his term going despite losing the support of his
own Democratic Party (PD) of Premier Matteo Renzi.
According to media reports Monday, the PD on the city
council is split on whether to join with the opposition in
demanding Marino quit in a no-confidence vote.
The PD has said it will ask its councillors to resign en
masse to sink Marino rather than risking the secret vote that
would be tabled on any no-confidence motion.
The PD says the expenses row was just the last in a long
series of cases that mean Marino cannot regain its trust.
In the latest row, Marino has said he never used public
money for private ends.
He told a press conference last week that he had "never
used public money for private purposes, if anything the
contrary".
He said when he met social housing officials in New York
last summer "I paid for the hotel myself".
He noted he was not under investigation in a criminal
probe.
Marino stepped down earlier this month after two opposition
parties filed suits claiming he ran up thousands of euros of
private expenses on his municipal credit card.
He was effectively ditched by the PD who pulled the plug
after months of sometimes grudging support through woes
including the 'Capital Mafia' case, an illegally parked car, the
glitzy funeral of a mafia boss and Pope Francis's public
disowning of him after he claimed to have been invited to an
event in Philadelphia.
But Marino has been defiant on the expenses case.
"The petitions filed against me by (anti-establishment
5-Star Movement) M5S and (Fratelli d'Italia) FdI are shameful,
written by ignorant people or by people in bad faith," Marino
said.
The city of Rome has asked to stand as civil plaintiff in
the Capital Mafia trial, starting November 5, involving
allegations that an organised crime group muscled in on council
contracts worth millions including work with migrants and Roma.
Most of the Capital Mafia cases began under Marino's
rightwing predecessor Gianni Alemanno.
Marino has claimed credit for unearthing much of the graft.
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