De Luca suspension lifted

(ANSA) - Naples, July 2 - A Naples court on Thursday upheld new Campania Governor Vincenzo De Luca's urgent petition against a suspension from office on the basis of an anti-corruption law.
    The ruling means that De Luca, a member of Premier Matteo Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD), will be able to take part in his first regional assembly meeting and appoint his executive.
    The ban, stemming from a January abuse-of-office conviction from De Luca's term as mayor of Salerno, has been lifted pending the court's ruling on his appeal against it. "Today respect for the will of the people has been respected and a new period of administrative work and commitment begins," De Luca commented on the ruling via his Facebook page. De Luca won May's regional election in Campania even though his name was included on a list of candidates deemed to be 'unpresentable' by a parliamentary anti-mafia committee because of the conviction related to an incinerator project.
    His candidacy was controversial but he won centre-left primaries to lead the PD ticket. Raffaele Cantone, the head of Italy's anti-corruption authority, said Thursday that the 2012 anti-graft law under which De Luca had been suspended was in need of being revamped. The Severino law, named after former justice minister Paola Severino, bans from office politicians convicted of certain crimes. Ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi was ejected from parliament under the law in 2013 after a definitive tax-fraud conviction.
    But the De Luca case comes after a successful challenge against a ban under it by Naples Mayor Luigi De Magistris.
    "Less than three years after the law came into force, it is encountering problems and doubts about its application," Cantone said in a report to parliament. He said the law was central to preventing corruption, while stressing that "legislative interventions" were needed to make it truly effective.
    Cantone also said that the counter-graft plans adopted in the public sector were largely inadequate. He said 90% of local authorities had adopted anti-corruption plans. But he said that the quality of these documents was frequently "insufficient" in terms of "method, sustainability and effectiveness". He added that this had led to "various critical points".
    Italy's political parties have been hit by a long series of corruption scandals that have caused widespread public disaffection. House Speaker Laura Boldrini said Thursday that "corrupt politicians should be isolated" while stressing adding that no sector is spared from the problem. "Corruption is so pervasive that it spares no sector...
    and the facts contradict another convenient representation according to which corruption only concerns politics," Boldrini said. She also warned of the danger of scrapping public funding for political parties. "In the absence of adequate measures there is the risk of politics being conditioned by private subjects and losing its autonomy," she said. "Today the parties are at the bottom of all citizens' approval ratings," Boldrini continued, adding however that without them "there is no democracy".