Sicily | Second level elections for the provinces in October » Webmarte.tv

From October the Free consortia of Municipalities, the bodies created to replace the provinces after their repeal, foreseen by the Crocetta government in 2013, will no longer be commissioners but will be governed by the bodies elected with second level elections.

The regional government council has in fact approved a bill which also introduces some changes to the regulations of the former Provinces, until the approval of the awaited national law for the reform of large area bodies for the introduction of direct universal suffrage elections of the organs.

The rule derives from the need to respect the ruling of last July of the Constitutional Court which, regarding the further postponement of the date for the election of the President of the free municipal consortium and of the Metropolitan Council, extending the functions of the extraordinary commissioners, contested the violation of the principle of reasonableness, of the representative and elective character of the territorial bodies as well as of the duty to establish the Metropolitan City, declaring its constitutional illegitimacy.

The bill, which will now be sent to the Ars for discussion and final approval, provides that the elections will take place on one of the Sundays between 6 and 27 October 2024.

The extraordinary commissioners appointed by the region, therefore, will remain in office only until the creation of the new bodies.

The mayors and municipal councilors in office will vote and be eligible to be provincial councilors.

Termination from municipal office entails the forfeiture of the provincial councillor.

The president will be elected from among the mayors of the province, whose mandate expires no earlier than eighteen months from the date of the elections.

The majority has long expressed its intention, in line with the orientation of the national government, to reintroduce the direct election of presidents and provincial councils.

A bill, which now seemed close to approval, was scuppered last February by the surprising vote against by the ARS, the result of the turbulence of the majority linked to the appointment of the general directors of health.

According to authoritative jurists, the regional law would in any case have come into force only after the repeal, by the national parliament, of the Delrio law which, in 2014, had abolished the provinces transforming them into consortia of municipalities.

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