”In Lecce, electoral programs often refer to the Litorale district, promising regeneration and development but when, in this part of the city, it is not possible to secure even a polling station in the area where residents can go to express their right to vote, it becomes difficult to believe the commitments made during the electoral campaign”. This is what the lawyer states in a note. Cristian Marchello, head of the Codacos Lecce headquarters.
”The story concerning the moving of the Frigole polling station gives us a painful but realistic image of how the Litorale district is considered by the institutions today: an extreme suburb cut off from urban development, an appendix in a condition of perpetual provisionality, whose population is not only forgotten, but is even hindered in its legitimate claim for greater opportunities for participation in the social and political life of the city”.
”The problem has been known for some time, but it was addressed seriously late, now close to the administrative and European elections, and above all in an easy and hasty manner, with a solution that does not ensure the principle of proximity of the polling station (as instead current ministerial provisions impose), forcing residents to travel kilometers to go and vote. It is shocking how none of the institutions involved in the affair were able to find a place to set up a polling station in the entire coastal district, which would have been possible simply by using common sense, even by setting it up in private premises, as has already happened in the past in other experiences, or in premises guarded by the police”.
”The indisputable fact remains that the residents of the coastal neighborhood are penalized compared to all the other residents of all the other neighborhoods, in the exercise of a supreme right such as that of voting. The result of all this is that for the residents of the coast they continue to wait to have the dignity of a consolidated city recognized, instead remaining relegated to the role of inhabitants of an abandoned suburb”, concludes the lawyer. Marchello.
