No decree on election-filing blunders
PdL still off slate in Lazio and Lombardy but Polverini back
05 March, 11:22
(ANSA) - Rome, March 5 - Italian President Giorgio
Napolitano on Thursday night reportedly turned down the idea of
a government decree to resolve election-filing blunders by
Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PdL) party in Lazio and
Lombardy.The issue of putting the PdL slate back on the ticket in the two key regions for the March 28-29 local elections will now be put to a cabinet meeting starting at 18:00 local Friday, political sources said.
Lombardy's incumbent governor, Roberto Formigoni, slammed the lower courts that turned down the party lists, claiming they committed "serious irregularities" Pierluigi Bersani, leader of the centre-left opposition Democratic Party, said a decree is "unacceptable" and reiterated its view that the PdL, Italy's biggest party, should go through the higher administrative courts which have always dealt with such cases. On Thursday a Rome appeals court re-admitted the personal ticket of PdL Lazio candidate Renata Polverini.
Venice's centre-left mayor, Massimo Cacciari, said the idea of elections without the country's biggest party in the two regions was "unthinkable".
Thirteen of Italy's 20 regions go to the polls on March 28-29 in what is seen as the biggest political test for Berlusconi since his election in 2008.
photo: Polverini
