De Luca among 17 'unpresentables'

(ANSA) - Rome, May 29 - Democratic Party (PD) candidate for Campania governor Vincenzo De Luca was named Friday among 17 regional-election "unpresentables" by the parliamentary anti-Mafia commission in a bombshell that sparked a fresh spate of internecine warfare in the PD.
    De Luca's naming among the crime-tainted candidates deemed unfit to stand for Sunday's vote, due to prior convictions or pending probes, prompted him to immediately sue the chair of the commission, Rosy Bindi, a heavyweight within his own PD party.
    Announcing the lawsuit via his lawyers, De Luca also challenged Bindi to a public debate at a time and date of her choosing. De Luca claimed Premier Matteo Renzi was the real target of "attacks" against himself. "This campaign of aggression...has one objective, which is to undermine the government and Renzi," he said.
    Hard-right MP Francesco Storace was among those who called for Renzi to quit over how the affair had been managed. PD Chairman Matteo Orfini condemned the list, and the way it was released, as akin to old-fashioned, lynch-mob justice. "(This) takes us back centuries, when trials were done in the streets, inciting the crowds," Orfini said.
    Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, leader of junior government partner the New Centre Right (NCD), said the unveiling of the list had unleashed "unprecedented ferocity" within the PD. "The argument over the unpresentables is wholly internal to the PD," Alfano said. "I saw statements being made of unprecedented ferocity within one party".
    Alfano said "the law will be applied" to De Luca. "This position is widely shared within government," Alfano said. "There are a lot of elements to indicate (incumbent Forza Italia Campania Governor Stefano) Caldoro is the only candidate that's safe to vote," he added.
    Caldoro weighed into the row to say that not only was De Luca unpresentable but also "ineligible".
    He said "his candidacy is against the law, beyond the law".
    Bindi defended herself against claims she had damaged the party and its chances in Campania, saying "no action was taken in an autonomous way (solely) by chair Bindi". She said the conclusions had been shared by all commission members.
    Four of the so-called "unpresentables" are running in Puglia and the rest in Campania, many more of them on the centre right or in the centre than on the centre left.
    De Luca was convicted in January of abuse of office in connection with an incinerator project while he was mayor of the city of Salerno, and handed a suspended sentence of a year in prison plus a one-year ban from holding public office. As a result of the conviction, he was also suspended from holding public office for 18 months under a 2012 anti-corruption law known as the Severino law but the Campania Regional Administrative Tribunal (TAR) reinstated him three days later.
    In a decision Thursday, the supreme Court of Cassation said ordinary courts, not administrative courts, must rule on cases coming under the Severino law. Experts said this would have implications for De Luca, who could be suspended if he wins Sunday's election.
    However De Luca himself has begged to differ.
    "The Severino law...is not applicable to those who are elected for the first time," he said Thursday. "So I won't be suspended". He was backed up by Reform Minister Maria Elena Boschi, who said the Cassation Court ruling "doesn't change anything".
    "De Luca is eligible to stand," she said Thursday. "If De Luca wins we'll respect the law, as always". On Friday, Bindi said there are no other PD candidates on the list of crime-tainted candidates. "We screened some 4,000 candidates," she said.
    "The previous commission did the same thing except after the elections, and it took them a year - we did it in under a month".
    "In Italy we don't have a national criminal database, but rather 110 (separate ones). This is an overview," she said.